Tameside Council

How Parity designed and implemented an online search facility to improve citizen service

Tucked away in an area of scenic beauty and industrial heritage lies Tameside. In the North-west region of England, Tameside has just under a quarter of a million people settled in its 40 square miles.

You can imagine why it’s a popular location to live and work when you see that it’s framed by rivers, the Pennines, historic market towns and canals. Not to mention its direct motorway links and proximity to Manchester International Airport.

Background

With a relatively large population, one of the most important factors is providing the local community with useful and informative public services. To that end, Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council has spent the last two years improving its service to citizens as part of Blair’s ‘Modernising Government Initiative’.

It has made in-roads into making its services accessible, convenient and secure to citizens over the Internet and through mobile phones, digital TV, PCs and call centres. Within the Government’s e-government programme, it has delivered 90% of its requirements to date, and remains on track to deliver 100% by 2003, well within the Government’s target date of 2005. In doing so, it has been awarded the title of a ‘Pathfinder’ council - one that is upheld as an example to others.

The challenge

As part of the e-government initiative, the council wanted to build on its initial success and set its own targets to put a number of public services online. It was decided to implement a Web-based Housing Choice system. It wanted to give its staff and Registered Social Landlords (RSL) the ability to offer an online housing allocation service with the means to advertise Housing Association owned properties that are available for rent, and to register and process applications from the public for those properties.

The council ‘owns’ the housing waiting list for potential tenants, and works with the New Charter Housing Trust and 18 housing associations, which administer a total of 45,000 properties. Therefore, it needed an efficient system that would draw together information from all these sources to allocate property fairly and efficiently, and maximise resources within the council.

The solution

Tameside selected Parity to handle the Housing Choice project. David Hutchings, Strategic Projects Manager at Tameside says,

"We chose Parity over other IT service providers because of its experience in the e-government sector and its reputation for being an established player in the market. Its team offered the right skills in the right applications and demonstrated that they understood our needs."

Parity’s team of consultants was tasked with designing, building and implementing an online self-service search solution for anybody requiring housing within the Tameside area. The council stipulated that the system had to include intranet capabilities and have the possibility of making the service available on Interactive Digital TV (iDTV).

Moreover, the service had to give users the ability to search against specific criteria quickly and easily, and be suitable for both staff within the council and RSL offices to operate on behalf of public visitors.

The project needed a clear set of deliverables, and so Parity agreed to a number of short-term aims. These were:

• Provide a "one-stop" solution for members of the public wishing to register with several Housing Associations simultaneously
• Provide information to the public on how frequently particular types of properties in different locations of the borough become available
• Ensure ‘fair play’ for applicants on the council’s waiting list, so that houses are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis
• Reduce costs of advertising vacant properties
• Simplify the registration process by creating ‘one-stop’ registration
• Previously, applicants had to register with individual associations
• Provide housing applicants with a letting system that lets them choose a property according to their requirements
• Provide the council with visibility and an audit trail of housing applicants’ requirements and how landlords meet them

Parity’s team set to work. To get the front-end up-and running, it designed a new Web site using colours and graphics to make it appealing to visitors. It paid particular attention to making sure the site loaded quickly, was informative and that the search facility was simple to use for those with limited Internet skills.

Once it had successfully completed that stage of the project, Parity then integrated the site with the housing waiting list, to automate the nomination scheme that operates within the borough to match tenants to all properties available regardless of the owner.

It wasn’t just a case of implementing technology and integrating systems though. Parity also trained administrators in how to use the system. Once this face-to-face training was complete, it also designed and produced user and technical documents to offer ongoing help.

Overcoming the obstacles

However, one main hurdle that Parity had to overcome was that the council wanted the service to be compatible with future technology.

The team had to ensure that the system would be compatible with interactive digital TV browsers. As only a few examples exist, there were limited services available for testing or development. This posed a problem for Parity. To handle this, it referred to the industry standards for Web TV outlined in the Electronic Government Interface (EGIF) standards as recommended by the Cabinet Office.

Andrew Leatherland, account manager at Parity says,

"We’re confident that it will support idTV services when they are more commonplace,"

The council also specified that the system be supported by ASP (Active Server Pages) - which are used to create intelligent Internet pages - as these are the skills its staff possess.

Leatherland continues,

"However, one of the council requirements is that another authority can take the code and integrate it within their own e-government systems," added Leatherland. "Therefore, we had to simplify things. We wrote the code in a format that meant it could be easily modified by another council, and avoided creating shortcuts, for example."

Finally, Parity faced a race against the clock, having just six weeks to deliver the new system.

The end result

Tameside now has a Web-based system that allows citizens to look for suitable housing in the area. They can search by number of bedrooms, style of house and location. The system then searches the database of available properties and shows a photo of the property and gives further details, so those looking for a home can check whether it is suitable - for example, for babies, young children, or disabled people. Citizens can then discover whether they are entitled to apply for the property and if so, complete an application form online to be considered for the property.

David Hutchings explains,

"All the aims set at the outset of the project are already in the process of being met. Since the site went live in May 2002, it has aroused a huge amount of interest. The Housing Choice Web pages get more hits than any other area of our site, which proves that it’s a service that citizens want and are happy using. It’s also reduced the number of enquiries to the housing aid office, meaning we can use the resources we have more efficiently."

"As well as making the housing allocation process easier, it has also stimulated interest amongst other housing service providers. As a result, we’ve already extended the service to private landlords so that they can advertise their properties on the site. We’re pleased that we’re seeing a return on our investment in only a few months, while supporting government initiatives and improving the service we offer citizens at the same time."

Carol Armstrong, project manager at Parity says,

"This is a great example of technology being used in a practical way in everyday life, and it’s good to see Tameside driving this project. It has recognised that technology develops so quickly that you need to ensure services are going to be compatible as people start to adopt them. iDTV is just one example.

Tameside is certainly living up to its Pathfinder status by being at the forefront of technology."

The future

Parity successfully delivered phase one of the project on time and to budget.

Working together, Parity and Tameside have proved that it is possible to deliver joined-up e-government services by linking a new Web site to the systems behind it - and improve the service offered to citizens in the process. Unlike many people in the UK, those looking for housing in the Tameside area can log on, find and apply for a property that suits their needs, 24-hours a day, 365 days a year.