E government has focussed our minds about how we can deliver services to the public more efficiently. I am keen to look at interactive ways our front line staff can use technology to speed up service delivery, our front lines should be our eyes and ears. If we re skill early enough we could have a next generation of manual type employees holding hand held I Pod’s to get street scene repairs and improvements to the back officer before the residents need to complain. Has anyone done any work around this theme?
T Mcdougall
3 Responses
Confused
Forgive me if I sound like I’m complaining about spurous reasons why Council Tax seems to outstrip Oil Price inflation but: why iPods ?
They are more expensive than many competitors, and you have to spend £100 every year sending them back to Apple to get a new battery. Multiply that by the number of frontline eyes and ears.
And how will it speed up the process ? Surely the slowest part is in the communicating of an issue to the relevant group or dept so they can sort it out.
Wouldn’t a walkie-talkie or a mobile phone be a simpler, quicker, and cheaper ?
I’m only asking because it’s superb to see the proactive stance you’re taking, and I’m intrigued by the solution and how it will work.
If you don’t want to reply here on the forum, then feel free to email me directly.
All the best.
Skills Gap
Mr Mcdougal – equipping your front-line staff with I-Pods would be great to get them break-dancing but not contribute a lot to interactivity or mobile wireless communications!
I think you are confusing I-Pod with the I-Paq from Hewlett Packard. Try their team, also Intel for details of remote wireless networking.
You say iPod, I say iPaq
Let’s call the whole thing off.
No – seriously. Call the whole thing off. Wouldn’t a mobile phone or a pen and a pad of paper would be simpler, more cost effective, and immediate ?
Unless this is bringing various other benefits to your customers (IE: local taxpayers) I can’t help feeling that this is local government simply using budget to buy several dozen (or a few hundred) gadgets at £200-300 each, and then spend money designing a back-office system to categorise and manage the data, and then training several dozen (or hundreds of) people to use the gadget.
Am I wrong ?