FileStore Success Story ATOC

Success Stories - West Somerset District Council

Helping West Somerset District Council meet operational efficiency targets

West Somerset District Council provide a wide range of local public services, many of which create a heavy administrative burden. In order to improve efficiency, save space and pave the way for more flexible technology-orientated ways of working, the council needed to move away from a high level paper dependency.

Along with local authorities across the country, West Somerset District Council is also working hard to meet its e-Government targets.

The e-Government initiative is focusing attention and resources on modernising central and local government and public services through information technology.

A vital part of achieving this goal - and its 2% efficiency saving target - is facilitating the transition from traditional, paper-driven processes to an electronic environment.

The challenge

West Somerset District Council was keen to benefit from the adoption of more efficient IT systems - providing it was affordable and practical for their working requirements.

The councils major operations were spread across two main sites and it was vital that any solution could seamlessly integrate into both locations.

Council departments can present a unique document management challenge at they use a variety of processes and documentation plus they are subject to specific legal requirements.

For the Planning and Building Control department not only are detailed historical records kept and maintained for over 3,500 cases, but some are required to be retained for six years, while others have to be accessible permanently.

This is one of the reasons why Councils face escalating costs just for document filing and storage.

In addition the councils working practices also presented a hidden challenge. As West Somerset District Council is responsible for a predominately rural area finding suitably qualified and experienced staff can be a problem.

In rural locations home-working can be the perfect solution allowing organisations to find the right experienced staff. This meant that any information management solution would have to enable the council to have secure remote location access to documents to facilitate home-working.

The solution

After consulting carefully with West Somerset District Council DCS was able to designed and implemented a multi-faceted and customised document management and workflow solution to meet all of the councils requirements.

As part of DCS's consultation we audited and documented the different processes used across each relevant department, which led us to recommend a customised version of our electronic document management solution FileStore EDM.

In addition over a quarter of a million pages were scanned into FileStore over three weeks creating electronic files to populate the system.

DCS has also introduced Kofax scanning software, which in conjunction with a large scanner already in situ at the Minehead offices allows council staff to quickly scan and upload new documents on an on going basis.

The next step for West Somerset District Council is to focus on further development of their business process and workflow systems using FileStore BPM. This will allow departments to automatically route, track and control transactions in areas such as Finance and Parking.

The Results

  • Elimination of expensive storage costs for over 3,500 planning files (25-40 pages per file)
  • Easy secure online access to over 80,000 decision notices and 90,000 land charges documents
  • An average of 1.5 hours saved per Revenue Officer as a direct result of reduced filing time
  • Increased efficiency and productivity
  • Improved workflow
  • The benefits of a customised system at a reasonable cost
  • Multi location document access using existing WAN links

West Somerset District Council Says

"EDMS has made life so much easier for everyone - not just council staff, but for our customers too.

We have rid ourselves of an expensive and time-consuming paper nightmare, are able to employ skilled home-workers from as far a field as Devon and we now respond to customer requests quicker and more efficiently than ever before.

Everyone is delighted!"
Kay Hernsley, Efficiency Officer, West Somerset District Council

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