With an annual turnover of £100 million, Woking Borough Council is responsible for providing services to over 90,000 borough residents. As a public sector organisation, Woking Borough Council has to deal with a diverse group of stakeholders with varying needs and wants: politicians, members, officers, staff and the general public.
The Challenge
With a wide range of committees making a vast array of decisions, Woking Borough Council had no visibility over the decisions made or the associated actions and tasks. To track decisions took an immense amount of resources. The process was labour-intensive, expensive and inefficient. The Council recognised that it needed a corporate tool that would help it to manage and track all subjects raised and their outcomes in the corporate decision making process, and to improve the transparency of the process for members, officers and the public. The Borough also needed a reporting tool to monitor the decision-making process and to measure performance in implementing decisions.
The Solution
Woking Borough Council initially commissioned Dorset Software to undertake a comprehensive needs analysis to determine its unique requirements, suggest areas for improvement and to construct a solution specification. Based on the specification Woking selected Dorset Software to provide a bespoke Democratic Process Management application. Building a strong partnership with Woking, Dorset Software mapped the Council’s internal business processes and determined its exact requirements through the use of a prototype and an iterative solution design process.
The bespoke solution, Shikari, is a web-based application that interfaces with the Council’s intranet and public website and integrates with its document management system. Shikari was delivered to Woking on time and to budget.
The Benefits
Shikari delivers a host of benefits to Woking Borough Council: it improves overall governance arrangements; it helps to streamline and monitor the decision-making process; and it enhances the transparency of the process; Shikari also enables the outcomes of decisions to be tracked; increases accountability across the organisation; and ensures that performance against targets can be monitored.
The Future
Woking is already looking to further extend the capabilities of and reliance upon Shikari. An Improvement Plan module has already been implemented and two further modules are currently being implemented: a Grant Application module and a Service Plan module.
