Vangent and Southwark Council Make

One Touch Government a Reality

Constituents Reap the Benefits of Truly Modern Customer Services

10th July 2008

Working in partnership with Vangent and Adobe, Southwark has made the concept of ‘One Touch Gov’ – a key government target – a reality in the borough.

‘One Touch Gov’ is designed to reduce avoidable contact between residents and local authorities caused by a failure to resolve requests efficiently. Targets set by the government aim to reduce this by half by 2011. Southwark Council is providing residents with one point of contact to deal with more than 100 public services based on an innovative new customer service system. This will enable residents to simultaneously request several council services such as, applying for a parking permit, registering on the electoral role, applying for free school meals and setting up a children’s clothes allowance.

Vangent, a leading business transformation company, has been working with the council since 2005 to help transform its customer services and resolve customer enquiries in an efficient manner. The implementation of Vangent’s ‘One Touch Gov’ solution is the latest innovation in a partnership that has already resulted in substantial savings and improvements in customer satisfaction ratings.

The underlying technology powering ‘One Touch Gov’, is Adobe’s LiveCycle Enterprise Suite and pulls together information from an authority-wide master database, integrating live data from a variety of back office systems into dynamic intelligent forms. This enables customer service representatives CSR’s) to quickly access a comprehensive picture of all relevant services a resident may need that may arise from a life changing event, such as moving into the borough or a change in their financial circumstances. In the past this would have required a resident to make numerous calls to the council to sort out things such as parking permit applications and housing benefits.

Now, if the customer agrees, the CSR will check their details on Southwark’s centralised resident account, enabling a number of required services to be automatically actioned. The CSR can then provide information about additional services that can be actioned at the same time – detailing how much of the pre-populated form has already been completed and how long it will take to finish.

Since its implementation an average of 800 customers per month have opted for the ‘One Touch Gov’ service. Dominic Cain, client services director at Southwark, said: “The value of ‘One Touch Gov’ services has been a topical subject for some years now – but Southwark has made it a reality. With Vangent’s help, we have transformed our customer service operations and now lead the way in providing modern customer services. Since the implementation of ‘One Touch Gov’, over five thousand residents who contacted the council about one service then opted to benefit from two or more additional services. Not only does this reduce the need for multiple contacts, which is frustrating for residents, but it also frees up valuable resource to help meet service demands elsewhere.”

Adrian Blair, head of professional services and ICT at Vangent said: “By pulling information from disparate sources, ‘One Touch Gov’ provides CSR’s with a single, easy to navigate view of all the services relevant to Southwark residents. CSR’s can now proactively offer residents the services they are entitled to without them having to make multiple calls to multiple departments, allowing Southwark to offer a premier service."

Southwark’s plans to progress towards resident self service will be a smooth process as Adobe LiveCycle, which powers ‘One Touch Gov’, can be moved quickly onto a customer facing web portal. The ubiquity of Adobe Flash, which is now on 98% of internet connected PCs worldwide, means that customers will be able view electronic forms that look just like the paper ones and either fill them in on screen or, if they prefer, print them out and fill them in by hand.

“Government at all levels is seeking to eradicate inefficient processes, improve service delivery and better engage with constituents. At the heart of this is a drive to share information between and within agencies quickly, efficiently, and securely,” said Simon Skillen, government practice manager at Adobe. “Adobe’s solutions for government transformation are helping agencies, like Southwark, deliver on the targets set down in National Indicator 14 and improve how they share information to enable them to provide constituents with more convenient and engaging services.”