Hampshire County Council empowers citizens to access information on demand
/An article entitled ‘
’ (author: Stuart Sumner) published this week in the May 12th issue of Computing, has Jos Creese, CIO of Hampshire County Council talking about the ability of Local authorities to deliver optimal services. This is something close to our heart at Esri UK and in fact Hampshire CC are a customer who have been successfully using LocalView Fusion and
for some time, as a part of a centralised drive to provide better services to citizens. In the article Jos notes that “Whats important is to design interfaces so that citizens can do what they want, when they want and how they want. Its better simpler and cheaper”. Online digital mapping is one means for Local Authorities to achieve this for many services – from finding nearby amenities like recycling facilities to reporting potholes or sharing census, demographic and other data for their area.
The article also talks about the need for “an accredited framework for sharing information appropriately between ‘blue light’ services and local councils”. While a national framework has not yet been put in place, some sharing is possible within the limits of existing legislation and we note that Hampshire are using ArcGIS Online to share location information and analysis with the Hampshire fire service and regional health agencies.
The ‘
’ is a great example of Local Authorities sharing appropriate data openly with the public and makes use of ArcGIS Online and LocalView to provide the online maps. In the article Jos Creese describes it as “a website for pooling geographical and other information from various councils and other bodies in and around Hampshire”. It’s in development but already caries some insightful maps and information.
Ovum has published a report “GIS in Government: Mapping the Route to Efficient Public Service Delivery” which has further information about service delivery at Hampshire CC. The report can be freely downloaded from our
.
Our recent blog post
Empower Customers - Go Digital by Default
shared this postcard which illustrates further how online interactive maps can deliver on-demand services to citizens:
If you are coming to the Esri UK Conference on June 6th, the whole of Track 8 is dedicated to Enabling Digital Services for Government. If you're not already registered then its filling up fast, with over 1100 people registered already - so no time to lose! This is the registration link.