Electronically Accessible Council

Modernising Government in East Ayrshire

The Council’s successful bid under the 1st Round of the Modernising Government Fund, entitled “Closing the Digital Divide” enabled us to invest in improvements to the ICT infrastructure so that the Council and its partners could begin to deliver electronic services through an extensive network of public access locations.

To empower as much of our community as possible to benefit from this new method of service delivery, new training and support centres were also provided where individual customers and groups could develop the necessary skills to play a full part in the information society.

These infrastructure developments served as essential prerequisites for the delivery of key objectives outlined within our successful bid to the 2nd Round of the Modernising Government Fund, entitled “Delivering the Digital Dividend”.

Within our 2nd Round Bid we successfully sought support and funding to facilitate the development of a single user-friendly interface to customers data held within the Council’s “back office” IT systems which would serve as a means for staff, and ultimately, customers to directly access Council information and services. We termed this proposed facility the “Customer Contact Gateway (CCG)”, and within our Bid highlighted our intention to implement it within the Council’s extensive infrastructure of Local Offices which span the length and breadth of the Councils geographic area, to provide a “Distributed Call Centre (DCC)” environment, which protected the investment made in the Local Office infrastructure, at the same time as retaining vital links with the community.

Our proposals for the development of our Customer Contact Gateway were based upon key principles of scalability and portability based upon national IT standards, thus ensuring portability to other public sector bodies, irrespective of the different business systems in use, and regardless of from when and where access was made. In developing our proposals we have played an important role as participating members of the MGF2 CRM Consortium.

MGF1 application bid - Closing the Digital Divide
(87KB)

MGF2 application bid - Delivering the Digital Dividend
(999KB)

MGF3 application bid - Enabling the Digital Community
(1MB)

"...the imaginative and effective use of modern technologies to help people to participate more effectively in their communities, or to overcome the problems of remoteness or isolation, can be vital elements in achieving the Government vision."

( AUDIT OF ICT INITIATIVES: In Social Inclusion Partnerships and Working for Communities Pathfinders in Scotland, Scottish Executive Central Research Unit, May 2000. )