Inverclyde Council improves productivity and performance with new email infrastructure

Customer challenge

Inverclyde Council provides a range of services to nearly 82,000 citizens on the West coast of Scotland. To help deliver these services, the Council requires a reliable ICT communications infrastructure. As part of a major transformation project – which was designed to bring the ICT infrastructure up to date – it opted to upgrade to the latest email technology.

Computacenter solution

To ensure it maximised its investment in the new infrastructure and minimised roll-out risks, Inverclyde Council partnered with Computacenter. The new email environment, which is based on HP servers and Microsoft Exchange 2007, was rolled out to the Council's 1,500 corporate users on time and with minimal disruption. Computacenter proposed the overall design of the new system, helped the Council take advantage of the solution's new features and assisted with mailbox migration and extensive knowledge transfer to ensure that the Council's ICT staff were able to provide ongoing support for the new system.

Results

The Council now has a reliable email system that is always available and this has helped increase staff productivity. This means that Council staff can provide better services to Inverclyde's residents, which has in turn helped the Council improve its overall reputation and efficiency. The solution has also enabled the Council to simplify compliance with the Freedom of Information Act.

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Customer profile

Supporting the local community
Situated on the West coast, Inverclyde is one of 32 council areas in Scotland, with a population of nearly 82,000. Historically, the area was an important shipping and industrial centre, but now caters for more modern businesses, such as electronics, financial services and tourism.

Inverclyde Council provides a full range of Council services to the local community, including education, social care services, roads, cleansing, housing, economic development and planning.

The Council is the area's largest employer with approximately 4,600 staff and an annual budget of around £164 million. Its mission is to deliver high-quality services to help make Inverclyde one of best-performing economies in the UK. To achieve these goals, the Council has founded its approach on customer satisfaction, openness, innovation and value for money.

Business challenge

Deliver better results and a better service
In 2005, the Council embarked on a massive transformational programme to improve its service delivery and boost economic growth in the region. Spurred on by its earlier poor performance in local government league tables, the Council was determined to improve not only its image but also its results.

Historically, there had been a lack of significant investment in ICT, so a large part of the programme was focused on improving the ICT infrastructure. The transformation impacted every element of the Council's ICT operation from datacenter to desktops. This included standardising all desktop equipment across the estate and establishing Microsoft Office as the standard office software, including email.

Email has become a critical business system for the Council. It is the main medium of communication with the police, health service, suppliers, other councils, national government and other public-sector agencies. Robert Stoakes, ICT Service Delivery Manager at Inverclyde Council, comments: "Without email it's impossible for the Council to deliver its services. Every employee with any administrative duties requires email, which amounts to 1,500 users at more than 100 different sites."

Although the Council's email systems process more than half a million messages a month, its existing email environment was unreliable. "Our email system frequently crashed, which was very disruptive to service users. These problems also required regular intervention from the ICT team, which was inefficient and time-consuming," comments Robert.

Computacenter solution

Enabling smarter and faster communication links
With email playing such an important role in not only communication but also the quality of public services, the Council decided to migrate its messaging infrastructure to the latest Microsoft technology.

To ensure it had access to the resources and specialist knowledge required to deliver the project, the Council selected Computacenter as its partner via a competitive tender.

The Council tasked Computacenter with designing the new email infrastructure – which is based on Microsoft Exchange 2007 using Outlook 2007 clients – and implementing the new technology in partnership with the in-house ICT team.
The first phase of the roll-out involved a three-week pilot to around 150 users, which enabled the joint project team to test the reliability, design, migration processes and training documentation.

This joint approach was essential for sharing expertise and best practice between the Council and Computacenter. "Knowledge-sharing was a key component of the project," comments Allan McDonald, ICT Support Team Leader for Inverclyde Council. "One of the key objectives was to equip our internal team with the skills they needed to manage the new email infrastructure on an ongoing basis."

To minimise disruption to Council staff and services, the project had to be completed within very tight timescales – a goal that was achieved, thanks to the collaborative approach and commitment of the team. "We were impressed with Computacenter's dedication to the project," comments Allan. "They provided extra resources to overcome technical challenges and ensure we met our deadlines."

The new messaging environment is based on clustered Exchange servers for improved resilience, with automatic fail-over for business continuity. "We were initially nervous about using such new technology but the enhanced functionality of the solution has real benefits. For example, the solutions' journalling function automatically makes a copy of every email sent on a separate database, which forms the basis of our archiving solution," comments Allan.

Results

Delivering a better service to the people of Inverclyde
In addition to improved email recovery, the new messaging environment will enhance collaborative working at the Council through its seamless integration with Microsoft Sharepoint and other communications tools, such as voicemail, e-fax and instant messaging. This lays the foundations for future goals, which includes improving customer service by introducing customer contact centres and enabling new channels of communication for citizens.

The email infrastructure will also form the basis of the council's new mobile computing strategy. Since the ICT transformation started in 2005, there has been increasing demand from staff for PDAs and other portable computing devices, which, thanks to the reliable messaging platform, the Council will be able to provision with email more effectively.

The most significant benefit of the new environment, however, is improved email availability. "Our previous email system suffered brief outages fairly frequently. The new environment hasn't gone down since installation, which means our IT team is able to focus on more strategic activities. Our users have much more confidence in the email infrastructure now," comments Robert.

Thanks to the improved reliability and enhanced functionality of its email environment, the Council has been able to:

Simplify compliance with the Freedom of Information Act: Public requests for information also extend to data held within historical emails. With the new solution, archiving and retrieving emails is more reliable and efficient, enabling the Council to respond to requests more quickly and cost-effectively.

Improve communication and collaborative working: The Council has been able to enhance communication with partners and citizens, and develop future strategies for mobile computing.

Increase productivity: Less downtime has resulted in more efficient staff and processes – for example shared calendars have helped reduce the administrative burden for PAs and secretarial staff. The inbuilt resilience of the email solution also means that the Council's ICT department no longer has to spend time implementing fixes.

"The email upgrade project has been a resounding success and was key to our overall ICT transformation," comments Robert. "With reliable and future-proofed technologies in place we can now deliver a higher level of service to the people of Inverclyde and improve our operational performance."