Community Facing Information Service

Delivering Greater Efficiencies

Fluent Technology was commissioned by the Council’s Information Team to provide a citizen facing community information service – Statistics Online – built on the ORIGIN product.

Download This Case Study (pdf)

The purpose of Stats Online is to empower Council and partner researchers, policy staff and knowledge workers with tools to assist with evidence based policy-making and to allow relevant findings to be shared with citizens through a web based information portal.

The initial scope was to implement a solution that would be a hub for policy and research data essential to the council’s policy formation processes and to ensure that this information is readily accessible to partners and the community.

However the scope of the system has grown impressively and it is now used to support many activities such as the Comprehensive Area Assessments and Local Area Agreement planning and reporting.

Time & Resource Saving Solution

The system has now been rolled out throughout the council and external partners such as the Primary Care Trust, Police, Fire, Health and Education all have direct access.

This brings many benefits including significant time and resource savings when developing policy support material such as maps, charts and tables. There are now 232 users of the system many of whom are conservatively saving several hours each per week on routine data queries and reporting activities.

In 2005 the system was independently recognised as a significant contributor in the Councils achievement of raising their overall Comprehensive assessment score from ‘Fair’ to ‘Excellent’.

Key Benefits realised:

• Dramatically streamlined data collection and reporting processes
• Increased consistency of data definitions across all partners and stakeholders
• Increased volume of ‘self service’ for information requests by stakeholders
• More timely publishing of information to the public
• Tailored interfaces for users (e.g. my region, my data, my reports, my resources)

Key features of the solution:

• More consistent management of data.
• A one-stop-shop for the storage, management and access to the information important to evidence-based decision making.
• A systematic approach to data sharing and needs analysis.
• Improved use of staff resources.
• Assisted the Council in improving their CPA score from Fair to Excellent.
• Allows the sharing of JSNA data between the Council and PCT.

Contact: Dave Bowman (Assistant Head of Policy, Performance & Partnerships) Phone: 0191 4247555 Email: david.bowman@southtyneside.gov.uk

See Stats Online in action