You may have heard about Digital by Design, the council’s multi million pound investment in its computer systems over two years.

With a background in IT (as a software programmer for 30 years, and based in Marple) I was appointed to the councillors working group for Digital by Design.  If you want to follow their progress yourself you can sign up to the Digital by Design blog at www.digitalstockport.info.

Today a group of councillors, myself included, had their first briefing of the year on progress so far.  I have to say I was very impressed with how the council are doing this, the tools that they are using and progress to date.  They gave the analogy of a caterpillar changing into a butterfly – a lot happening under the surface with just a few visible signs on the outside to start with.  At the moment there is a beta version of a new council website that is starting to come together (you can look at beta.stockport.gov.uk).   A lot more will be added to the website in the near future and eventually it will replace the current website altogether.

The new beta website

At an earlier stage just yet are the components that let you do things, like pay your council tax. But even here it looks impressive and simple to use.  They have taken input and ideas from the best and most modern – take a look at the government sites for renewing your car tax or passport which are both new, very clear and simple to use.

One thing that was very impressive, and partly why there is not too much visible yet, was that the team are building reusable components that can be used over and over.  That means that, for example, new websites and services can be added very easily.

One of the councillors made the point that it is important that residents who find it difficult to access the web site should not be ignored – it is often difficult to get through on the phone with resources at the council under a lot of pressure.  But, the more people that can use the website, especially as it gets better and lets you do more, hopefully there will be less calls allowing them to cope better and give a better service.

I suggested that one way things might be improved enormously would be to invest in voice recognition – i know some people don’t like talking to machines but they are getting better and more natural – and again, the more calls that can be handled automatically the more the people in the call centre will be left to look after those calls that absolutely need it. The council faces even more cuts in the next four years so it is vital that IT brings as many efficiencies as possible.

Later phases will bring big improvements to the systems to report things too with automatic feedback and updates as things are repaired and fixed.

And finally, one of the key principles behind the new systems is that finally the council’s computer systems will have joined up information so it won’t feel like you keep having to repeat yourself to lots of different people and computers. Incidentally, something that will make the council’s staff a lot more efficient internally as well.

I am now looking forward to more updates from the group as things progress.