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Cobweb Solutions aid Kent County Council in knowledge share initiative between local authorities

The Inter-Authority Partnership Unit (I-APU) of Kent County Council (KCC), created to improve performance between local authorities, has enlisted the services of Cobweb Solutions. Cobweb Solutions manages the communications system for the I-APUs pilot Local Government Franchising (LGF) partnership between KCC and Swindon Borough Council (SBC). The implementation of Cobweb’s Hosted Windows SharePoint Services, a team working and collaboration tool enables the KCC and SBC to share best management practice and collaborate on confidential documents over the Internet. It is also used for time recording and provides a central place to post all programme documentation.

LGF, funded by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Local Government Association, is the KCC’s own commissioning and delivery agent. It facilitates service delivery partnerships between different local authorities, to replicate best management practice, through temporary transfers of people and long-term transfers of ways of working.

The first partnership between KCC and SBC was initiated to radically improve the performance of Swindon’s social services department over a two to three year period. The programme went live on 1st October 2004 and Swindon social services’ first ever Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) ‘star’ was announced publicly on 1st December 2005. This continues to be an ongoing project for which KCC provides continued support and guidance to 600 staff in Swindon’s Social Services department.

The I-APU is a small unit with four members of staff, located in County Hall in Maidstone, Kent that actively support the partnership between KCC and SBC.

The Challenge

Senior officers at KCC and SBC, situated in different parts of the country, required a means to easily and efficiently share confidential information, collaborate on proposals and documents and liase on a daily basis. Although some officers were willing to travel to attend meetings, this was not a solution for day-to-day liaison.

As this was an entirely new initiative Maureen Smith, business delivery manager of the I-APU decided from the offset that she required a management tool that would ensure the success of this relationship.

Maureen Smith comments, “I felt in order for the first LGF partnership to run to the best of its ability, I needed a means for senior officers in Kent and Swindon to share documents in a variety of formats easily and efficiently, whether in the office or at home. I began researching how this could be done. As a very small department we did not want to implement the technology in-house as the high cost implications were very clear, so enlisting the help of a hosted provider seemed the best route for us.”

The Solution

A total of 50 people in Kent and Swindon are now utilising Cobweb’s Hosted Windows SharePoint Services, which was brought in to specifically cater to the needs of the flagship LGF partnership. The SharePoint site provides the IAP-U, KCC and SBC the flexibility to store, share and retrieve reports and proposals and the means to prepare summary reports for steering group meetings.

Due to the confidential nature of the information being shared on the KCC and SBC section of the IAP-U SharePoint website, security was a key requirement. Senior officers and other key parties in the LGF partnership have been supplied with a login and password, ensuring the confidential information on the site remains secure. The programme is broken down into work streams and whilst all have access to the general programme documentation, where necessary it is also possible for personnel to have additional access permissions and editing capabilities, which Cobweb tightly monitors on their behalf.

Other security features within the Cobweb Hosted Windows SharePoint Services solution includes a comprehensive antivirus protection, daily data backups and secure access via SSL that removes the need for expensive and difficult to manage VPNs.

Predictability of cost through Cobweb’s pay-as-you-go per user per month pricing system also allows for the IAP-U to keep costs down in response to the changing numbers of people that might require access to the SharePoint site.

Michael Frisby, business development director at Cobweb Solutions comments, “The way in which the IAP-U is facilitating the KCC and SBC partnership demonstrates how important SharePoint is as a management tool. It enables councils in different locations to share best practice and knowledge and to work together more effectively without the need for regular physical meetings which can be very time consuming and with travel costs, very expensive.”

The IAP-U must keep a tight reign on the time being spent on the LGF partnership by both Kent and Swindon personnel. The SharePoint site acts as a useful resource for time recording. In addition, timesheets can be easily accessed and printed for steering group meetings.

Maureen Smith adds, “The SharePoint website has assisted the IAP-U enormously with the delivery, procurement and support of its first LGF partnership. It has enabled Kent to share its best practice management knowledge with Swindon, and I am extremely pleased with the outstanding results they have achieved so far.

“I fully intend to use Cobweb’s Hosted Windows SharePoint Services for future partnerships as we’ve been able to totally rely on Cobweb for technical support. We plan to develop this programme so that other high performing councils that have particular strengths can share expertise with other local authorities, whether that is in social services or a council that has executed a successful cultural programme.”