10 June 2022
The internet and digital technologies have opened up how we provide access to Council services, and we continue to develop our website and the ways in which people can find information and transact with us online.
When reviewing our digital development, we have recognised that one barrier to further progress lies in our ability to integrate systems. Where a request is made for something that requires us to pass details of what's required to another system it's difficult without either relying on manual work or lengthy and expensive technical development. Addressing this challenge is our next digital priority.
We have historically explored whether the enterprise integration platforms might be a solution. Our IT service delivery partner (Delt Shared Services) have been working with one of the Gartner "leaders" in this field for some time, revealing that the cost and effort to master this type of integration technology is substantial and probably not justified for us.
Our new focus is looking into the possibility of using intelligent automation tools to achieve integration, in particular robotic process automation (RPA). The potential for RPA is huge across the range of services and different back end systems that we operate. Over the coming months we will be analysing the market and our processes to identify areas where RPA might be able to improve service delivery and/or help reduce our costs. RPA promises to automate repetitive manual tasks that happen when data is passed between systems, for example from an online form to a spreadsheet or other system.
We also recognise the impact this type of technology will have on our workforce. At a time when we face a widespread skills shortage and are finding recruitment difficult, we hope RPA might be able to help. It should allow staff to focus on delivering personalised service to customers with complex needs by reducing the mundane, repetitive work and allow our staff to focus on analysing data or working on in areas requiring experience or judgement. The support required to manage this transition to higher value and more fulfilling roles is part of our People Strategy and the long-term success of our digital work to explore intelligent automation will rely upon our ability to help our workforce as much as our choice of technology and where we try to apply it.