Eastleigh Borough Council has implemented an electronic document and records management system from Idox to speed up document retrieval, reduce its use of paper, and provide a faster response to revenues and benefits enquiries.
The project involved transferring the paper-based records of EBC’s revenues and benefits unit onto a customised Idox workflow and storage system. Following the completion of a pilot project in November 2008, the system went live in April 2009. Idox said that this was the first time that an Idox system had been fully integrated with Academy, Capita’s core revenues and benefits back-office system.
Loraine Radford, head of revenues and benefits, Eastleigh Borough Council, and also chair of the Academy Southern User Group, said, “It is already evident that efficiency has improved through the way in which we can now manage our workload more effectively. Staff have embraced the system and morale has noticeably improved since we started using Idox.”
EBC has scanned and transferred over 480,000 pages of information to the EDRMS, avoiding the drawbacks of hard-copy filing and saving the equivalent of over three large football pitches of paper. Since implementation, work has already started to extend the system into the development and HR units.
Idox also recently announced new IT contracts with Cornwall Council and Central Bedfordshire Council worth £1.6 million to merge and integrate their respective systems following their creation during the Local Government Review.
As part of the review, the council system in parts of the UK has been streamlined with the creation of nine new unitary authorities. These new councils have replaced existing two-tier county and city, borough or district authorities with a single body. In Cornwall, this meant creating one entity to replace six existing district and borough councils as well as the county council.
The contracts with Cornwall and Central Bedfordshire will see Idox develop IT systems to support planning, building control, environmental health and trading standards.
