Channel Shift in the Public Sector
Analysing metrics, tracking trends and measuring
the benefits of channel shift
David Wilde, Chief Information Officer
Essex County Council
Essex: delivering the best quality of life
Essex County
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1.4 million residents
368,000 hectares
596,500 homes
60,000 businesses
4,642 miles of road
£20 billion local economy
Essex County Council:
• £2.13 billion gross budget – but shrinking rapidly
• 48,000 employees (34,000 in schools)
• 210,000 pupils across 571 state and 52 private
schools
• Partners include 5 PCTs, 12 district and borough
councils, two unitary authorities, 270 parish
councils
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Our future direction
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Customer Service definition – start point
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There have been several iterations of this for all across public services
and one of our challenges is customer centric vs organisation centric
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That said, understanding place, population and business is key
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The other challenge is service vs customer, silos vs total service delivery
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So, do we know what we deliver, to whom, is it right, how much, where
and how and who else?
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We have been very good at setting targets for channel shift for services
already in place but are they the right services or delivered in the right
way?
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Also, right channels for right experience?
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What do we know? Big Data, Analytics, Trends
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These aren’t new in public services, much of our business has always
been about big data
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Analytics has been used extensively for demographic and geographic
definitions and targeting of public service delivery, but reducing resources
demands more
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Previous examples in action: Neighbourhood Renewal (and
Neighbourhood Statistics), Supporting People, Housing, Mosaic
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We don’t own all the data now and never have. Public sector bodies are
custodians. We have to get used to mash-ups multi-sourced data.
Transparency is set to grow
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Intelligent analytics are the future – answer the difficult questions, don’t
just describe the landscape
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So, key enablers, game changers and demand…..
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Key enablers
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Big data is only as useful as the data is good quality, garbage in, garbage
out
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Dull but absolutely crucial is data quality, not just from now on but
historical too
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Open data, accessible and interoperable from all sectors
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Good enough data, doesn’t always have to be 100% correct
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Transparency, let people know what you have and what’s possible and
ask your customers!
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Over-ambitious targets don’t help, be realistic but there can be nice
surprises, 20% shift may be good for some but not others – what works?
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Right channels, not necessarily all the channels (mobile especially)
Game Changers for Customer and channels
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The IT basics:
Search, indexing and processing have caught up with our aspirations
Access, real time and always on are getting there (except for rural)
data management and sharing – still hard work to get protocols agreed
networks and applications convergence – only just beginning but will really
transform customer service in public sector
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The more advanced:
Strategic direction – moving to people, place and customer and not
organisation
Migration from legacy data – long and difficult journey
Demand – it’s about give me options, not what info is out there
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But out in the real world people are just getting on with it, through social
media and adoption of other disruptive technologies
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Corporately technology and customer can’t drive this, the business can’t
transform without it – partnership, and then there is……
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Demand
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Transparency – we are turning the corner on this and it’s making our
population more demanding about what we have and what we do with it
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Difficult decisions needs well informed and researched choices, the I in IT
needs to service those and not just lay out the landscape
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What are my options for reducing deprivation? What impact does it have
for other services? How do bridge the gap between education and
employment? Is there a gap? Addressing these questions informs good
customer service
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Staff need to operate across the old boundaries, it’s absolutely about
people and place, not government agencies. Key to channel shift and
holistic service provision
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Services need to work with your customer channels and give up their own
routes to become truly customer centric
Our experience, hard lessons
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Blue badge, replicated elements of the service based on what was there
instead of challenging the process, now revamped and working – hybrid
on-line, face and call centre
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Family Information Service, great success on channel shift (80% from
phone and face to face to on-line self serve)
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Events, summer parks parking for 40 days for £10, 60% on-line from zero
and hundredfold increase in take-up
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Special Education Needs service, dumped the channel shift plan
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Pot-holes, great improvement in access to data and transparency,
caused all sorts of trouble on the data quality and customer satisfactions
fronts for the service
Public services 2015, virtual and not just public sector?
Shared services
as standard
Internet,
PSN
services
Libraries,
culture
and
Leisure
Virtual planning
economic growth
Environmental
managed
services
Shared service
centres,
Community
hubs
VDI,
CRM, MDM
BI
Virtual
desktop and
data storage
Virtual
education
Social and healthcare
managed services
ICT integrated into outsourced service provision
Total service providers of the future:
BUPA, Nuffield, Veolia, Planning Exchange, Telcos, Google, MS, Oracle?
Where will the Systems integrators and applications suppliers be?
Virtual services and bid data analytics developed for free?
Public services delivered through very different vehicles
Local
benefits
and jobs
services