CAMBRIDGESHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL
Central help Cambridgeshire County Council 'Workwise'
Central has helped Cambridgeshire County Council to transform its working environment by providing its employees with fast, simple, 'always on', access communications. Using an Avaya Unified Communications solution the Council is building a converged IP network which will improve the delivery of services to a population of over 560,000 citizens.
The new converged IP network has allowed the Council to achieve a true business transformation, helping meet its objective to develop an empowered and responsive workforce, whilst delivering more than 20% (£1.2m) savings over a three year period.
Cambridgeshire County Council has been responsible for the provision of County functions throughout Cambridgeshire, excluding the Peterborough area, since 1998. Within this area there are 5 District/City Councils covering Cambridge City, East Cambridgeshire, Fenland, Huntingdonshire and South Cambridgeshire which are responsible for the provision of District functions. Cambridgeshire Community Network (CCN) provides CCC and their partners with up-to-date network coverage, capacity and facilities. CCN is a countywide IP based network shared by the Council, its partner District Councils, and public access outlets, totaling about 450 locations.
A key aim of Cambridgeshire County Council is to provide to their staff and citizens with the right information, in the right format, at the right time; according to the devices they have available and regardless of location.
Central provided Cambridgeshire County Council with a new resilient communications solution which underpins the Council's WorkWise Project an incentive designed to improve the working environment, support flexible working and save money to release into front line services. This initiative is specifically designed to reduce operating costs and improve council efficiency.
The old telephone system was a Centrex solution provided by NTL which was proving to be very costly with moves, adds and changes becoming very expensive, inflexible and time consuming. The new solution will provide huge cost savings whilst being more flexible and effective.
Central's solution to the Council's needs was to provide an Avaya Communications Manager running on S8720 media centres in 2 data Centres, one at Cambridgeshire County Council Headquarters and the other at a Green Field Site in Huntingdon. The first phase of the solution was configured to support 1001 users and will eventually deliver applications to over 3,500 users over 3 years, although this is more likely to be in excess of 5,000.
"Our vision is that staff work flexibly, balancing work life pressures and the needs of the community - satisfying these and their own requirements.
'Upon project completion the Council will benefit from a truly unified communications solutions, providing over 5,000 government employees with a platform to effectively communicate, share and interact together from anywhere at anytime, enabling new forms of flexible working and significantly improving the quality of public services offered" said Alan Shields, Technical Architect, Cambridgeshire County Council.
Initially, the Council evaluated the technology to support 'WorkWise' as they needed to decide what platform to use before they considered a partner to work with. They went through a rigorous selection process to ensure that the technology they adopted had the robustness and resilience they required and that the product was not proprietary. Avaya was chosen for its 5 x 9 resilience and that the product was open and expandable, which meant that they would be able to add products from various suppliers.
Cambridgeshire CC tendered through OGC/ Catalist framework as it simplifies and shortens the tendering process, effectively creating a select tender list and negotiating best value on behalf of Local Authorities.
Central were chosen by Cambridgeshire CC to design, implement and support their solutions, as they had worked with them during technology appraisal stage. The Council, who had no VOIP experience, were very impressed with Central's level of product knowledge, their professional services and the support they had received during this process. Central are also a Catalist supplier.
The IP solution deployed by Central was based on Avaya's Communication Manager IP Telephony software. This created the ideal converged network, allowing them to make better and more flexible use of accommodation resources and helping them to move to a 7 to 10 desk ratio as an average across the authority. The solution provides number portability, allowing employees to log into any handset, from any location, using their personal ID, this then becomes their phone.
The new converged network was also a key 'building block' to creating a unified communications solution, with new applications designed to drive productivity by increasing collaboration amongst the Council's staff. By using Avaya's Modular Messaging application employees can now answer voice messages and email from one Microsoft Exchange inbox.
The solution also includes Avaya's Meeting Exchange which allows the council to book conferences via a web based browser, record and play back later and provides collaboration with the users.
In addition to the current Avaya one-X IP Phones, the Council will be rolling out Avaya's software based telephone the 'one-X Portal' - another fundamental productivity booster that will allow staff to place and receive phone calls from any desktop or laptop PC with Internet access, making it an ideal application for employees on the move or working remotely.
"It's a fast moving world where people need to respond quickly to meet their customers needs - in the government sector citizens are expecting higher quality of services" said Andrew Shaw, Head of Central Public Sector, Avaya UK "By deploying the right unified communications applications we have shown how local government can improve business agility, creating a virtual workplace with fewer employees needing to work in 'headquarters'. Local Government organizations are not just speeding up service delivery but are also changing the way they work to make services more cost effective and more accessible" concluded Andrew.
Outside of the 20% cost savings the Council expect to make many other soft savings including:
Productivity
- Less time travelled
- Reduced need for mobile workers to return to base to pick up communications
- Reduced need to travel to attend meetings in person
- Less time spent travelling to share and review documents/files in person
- No need to use Corporate office with direct connection to the network
- Ability to utilise range of network access technologies in order to be location independent e.g. private and public cable broadband, WiFi, GPS, SMS
- Less time spent playing 'telephone-tag'
- Less time spent by Personal Assistants (PA's)
- Less time spent using numerous communication devices or applications
Cash savings
- Moves, Adds, Changes
- Mileage and expenses
- Mobile and fixed-line costs
- Network operational management
- Significant reduction in the cost of supporting moves adds and changes
- Large reduction in miles travelled and expenses occurred by council employees,
- Reduction in number of ISDN and private network connections, saving a significant amount of cash
Asset Management/Total Cost of Ownership
- Hand-sets/mobiles provided only where necessary
- Organisational efficiency
- Reduced number of staff directories (incl. integration with Active Directory)
- Improved network
"In the government sector citizens are expecting higher quality of services" said Alan, "By deploying the right unified communications applications we have improved our organisational agility, creating a virtual workplace with fewer employees needing to work in 'headquarters'. Cambridgeshire County Council is not just speeding up service delivery but is also changing the way we work to make services more cost effective and more accessible".
