Wasting "TheCloud"

Faced with budget cuts, council waste and environment departments must get creative and establish new ways of using technology to maximise assets, improve efficiencies and save costs, explains Nigel Bridges, managing director at Whitespace Waste Software

Operating in a climate of major budget cuts, council waste and environmental departments must examine how they can maximise what resources they have. This will involve some "out of the box" thinking to fully utilise their existing IT assets, enhance service efficiencies and reduce operational costs. I will discuss each of these areas and explain how more can be achieved when working innovatively, with less.

The Shared Option

Rather than facing the cost of replacing existing IT systems, most councils could cut the cost of this ownership by sharing with another council. These cost reductions are being achieved through shared services such as HR, payroll and accounts - this is now being extended to technology.

The successful waste partnership of South Oxford and Vale of White Horse councils is a good example of shared services. The two councils together procured a waste collection operation from Verdant - underpinned by a shared IT solution to meet a common requirement. These authorities are demonstrating that the cost of purchasing a shared solution is less than twice the cost of purchasing individual ones.

The key driver for change will be the ability for multiple council organisations to collaborate using one service and/or one application. Web-based technology, coupled with software delivered as a service, or "the Cloud", will allow councils to operate in partnership - both together and with their selected contractors to radically reduce costs and improve effectiveness - sharing best practice for mutual improvement.

Another sharing option could combine waste and environmental services in order to improve economies of scale. This could involve merging depots, merging domestic and trade waste collections and other rounds such as bin delivery. At least one council has adopted best practice by allowing small bulky items to be collected on normal rounds as authorised side waste, thus reducing the bulky round costs significantly.

Or how about employing road cleaning rounds to also record road damage, or enforce illegal vehicle parking? Or using the waste crews to report on the status of other council assets such as graffiti, non-functioning lamps etc? I'm sure there are a many reasons why not to do such things, but maybe there are things that could be shared with a little creative thinking.

Outsourcing The Hassle

Councils are also finding that running their IT in-house is becomingly increasingly costly, with a high capital outlay and ongoing internal support expense. Another option is for councils to consider outsourcing the management of IT systems to trusted external providers, so they no longer have the expense of owning and supporting IT infrastructure - as well as the challenge of keeping data safe. The provider makes its margin by sharing infrastructure and other items and the council benefits in a reduced cost against guaranteed reliability.

Financial Control

If the central finance system does not fit the specific requirements of a specific department - trade waste, for example - because it is allowed to generate revenue, then why not consider using a separate finance application that is suited to that vertical business? This may make revenue generation easier and cash collection more efficient because the finance system is specifically tailored for that specific department.

Maximum Efficiency

Another key area that councils can tackle is to make their waste and environmental services even more efficient. Recent studies on people productivity have summarised the three following areas as the biggest barrier to operational efficiency:

• bad business processes

• repetition of tasks due to misunderstandings

• mistakes due to not understanding processes and systems.

Is it possible for councils to overcome these issues with technology? Virtually all software used in enterprises today has the same goal; supporting business processes. Some processes are entirely automated, relying solely on communication among applications. The majority rely on people to initiate the process, approve process documents and resolve any exceptional situations that arise.

In either case, it is often possible to specify a discrete series of steps known as a "processflow" or "workflow" that describes the activities of the people and software involved in the process. Once this workflow has been defined it can be reviewed and improved and then an application can be built around that definition to support the improved business process.

By speeding up the processes involved in delivering services and using technology to simplify the associated complexities and variables, councils can save significantly on resource and operational costs. The benefit of this type of technology has delivered significant productivity improvements.

Waste Collection

While route planning may seem simple to an outsider, it is a highly complex business. By using technology to accurately track, trace and plan fleet collections, in parallel with two-way communications with drivers, major efficiencies and cost savings in collections could be made.

Concentrating on optimising routes can then lead to consolidation of rounds and even bringing five-day rounds down to four, which in turn will have benefits of a four-day collection week (Tuesdays to Fridays) to avoid the costly bank holiday issues that we are all familiar with. At least one far-sighted council has done this, with significant efficiency gains and happier residents. If your IT technology can facilitate the route optimisation and planning and then support the new round structure, there's a win-win ready to happen.

Council waste departments need to employ a creative, sharing approach when planning their services. By cleverly using their existing and new technologies to reduce the complexity of these operations, they can reduce costs and make waste operations as efficient as possible.