Government Technology

The Transformational Government agenda has targeted local authorities with the challenging task of saving £21.5bn by 2008, whilst improving the general quality of service offered by each department. Central to the success of this is the adoption of technology.  Home and remote working have taken many public sector bodies down this road and now mobile working which, until now, has been largely overlooked, is set to provide the ‘last mile’ and offers the greatest return.

Under the umbrella of flexible working many public sector bodies have already implemented home working by extending applications to enable field workers to work from home, or use their home as a base to integrate with the existing legacy systems. Improvements in broadband speeds and thin client technology have enabled this evolution to take place with a real and absolute justification.

Remote working is a further extension by the provision of application access to field workers who are not using their home as a base. Here access is via laptop or tablet type devices and takes advantage of the ever increasing speeds of wireless connectivity.

The next logical step is true mobile working which is, perhaps, where the greatest gains will be made, enabling field workers to access their line-of-business applications from any device such as a BlackBerry, Pocket PC or other PDA and Smart Phones.

It is estimated that some 20 per cent of the 5.5 million local government employees are true mobile workers and this number is set to increase as the public sector reassesses where staff work, central office accommodation is reduced, and staff are located closer to the communities they serve.     Today only a few authorities are equipping these mobile workers with mobility technology.

One such forward thinking Authority ,the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, has decided to embrace Mobile Working in the early stages of its flexible working strategy. As a direct result of the changes in legislation the Borough decided to transform the way their licensing officers work in the field, connecting them to their back-office system on a 24/7 basis, using AppSwing’s Enterprise Solution and BlackBerry devices.  This enabled them to make informed judgements by accessing, in real-time, relevant information regarding the premises under scrutiny.

 “The Borough saw immediate benefits from the new system including a gain in efficiency, improved accuracy, and uplift in the quality of service offered by the department”, commented Alan Barwise, Head of Licensing. To achieve the efficiency targets set out by the Government public sector bodies will need to embrace true mobile working and put the information into the hands of their employees when out of the office.

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