Southwark Council

The Customer

Situated in Greater London, Southwark London Borough Council was created in 1965 through the amalgamation of three smaller councils. It now has a population of over 320,000 and is home to tourist hotspots The Shard, Tate Modern and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

The Challenge

After an initial engagement at a public sector event, Southwark Council approached Hitachi Solutions with the common issues they faced, regarding their internal systems.

Disparate systems across the council meant that services were isolated, resulting in miscommunication. Case progression was slow due to the inability to handle enquiries quickly and efficiently, lacking the availability of information in a single place.

Over time the combination of technological investment in a variety of systems created a disjointed viewpoint, compromising data handling. All of which impacted the citizen experience, delaying response times.

• Replacement of the end-of-life solution that handled the highest number of processes at the authority.
• Investing in an evergreen platform to mitigate against the ownership of multiple end-of-life systems.
• Setting the foundations for a platform strategy to IT procurement to remove data silo’s which reduce operational costs.
• Moving to a low code strategy to enable Southwark to handle a greater share of development in the future.

The Solution

Hitachi Solutions began to work with Southwark Council, starting with the Vulnerability Hub, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Hitachi Solutions had already established this Power Platform solution for Local Authorities to manage their data and processes to support vulnerable citizens, who were shielding or self-isolating because of the pandemic. Further investment has since been made in the authorities Covid-19 response with the implementation of Dynamics 365 Test and Trace taking place in December 2021. Feedback from Southwark’s PHE team has been overwhelmingly positive as they were able to move away from paper-based processes to better manage the spread of the virus.

Hitachi Solutions continued to work collaboratively with Southwark Council to focus on their corporate CRM systems, looking at the role they have within the organisation to achieve key strategies. Resulting in a successful CRM on-premise assessment and upgrade to Dynamics 365.

As Southwark Council looked to seize on the digital transformation momentum built during the pandemic, Southwark Council wanted to provision a corporate data platform and capability, able to support all service areas with their data needs. In late 2021, Hitachi Solutions deployed a central data platform. Southwark Council’s Children’s services team were the first workstream to onboard onto the data platform, where they worked with Hitachi Solutions to bring together 7 disparate data sources to help create a 360-degree view of a child and family.

• Power BI and Azure
• Dynamics 365 Customer Services
• E-Forms Accelerator Hitachi IP
• Microsoft Power Apps

The Future

Southwark Council are orientated towards becoming a data-driven organisation, aligning services through the consolidation of apps using, Power Apps, CRM and Data Platform. As a result, improving overall citizen experience and wellbeing through technology. Southwark Council also continues to recognise the importance of data being incorporated through the organisation, building a data culture, as they identify further need for change across other departments.

Further engagement is planned for a housing Catalyst that will explore the replacement of additional disparate systems. The engagement will challenge the status quo for resident experience by promoting and highlighting the potential of portal technology across a range of services.