IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

In a drive to enhance the quality of service provided to its housing tenants, Sheffield Homes has successfully completed a £1million overhaul of the IT Infrastructure supporting its core housing system.

The improved IT infrastructure, provided by Northgate Information Solutions, has enabled staff to be more responsive to tenant needs through increasing capacity and responsiveness for its 1,000 IT users.

Prior to the project, capacity restrictions and poor response times had constrained Sheffield Homes’ ability to deal effectively with enquiries. There is now capacity for a greater number of users to access the system simultaneously without any reductions in performance. The core technology also provides a firm foundation on which to manage future developments, such as flexible working for staff and increased self-service for tenants.

Northgate won the project following a competitive procurement run by Liberata, Sheffield Homes’ Strategic Partner. Northgate’s innovative approach and willingness to work with other partners (Liberata and Anite) was deemed to provide best value for money.

Janet Parry, Director responsible for ICT at Sheffield Homes, said: “Dealing quickly and efficiently with customer queries is central to our service ethos. The infrastructure refresh was imperative for us to be able to respond to customer queries quickly and provide the best level of service possible.

“The previous capacity restrictions and response times meant inefficient back-office processing, as staff had to wait their turn to log on to the system. We are now much better placed to move towards more flexible working practices and services for our tenants.”

Sheffield Homes is an organisation set up and owned by Sheffield City Council to manage its council housing. Its mission is to work together to provide excellent homes and services in order to create clean, attractive neighbourhoods for communities in Sheffield.

Northgate installed 2 brand new Enterprise Level servers to support the newly upgraded core housing application, together with Network Appliance Filer storage technology to meet storage and backup requirements.

This innovative approach reduces the time needed to back up systems, thereby increasing the hours during which the system can be used. Northgate has also implemented new thin client technology (22 Citrix presentation servers and 1000 Windows terminal devices) by which users access the core housing application and other applications. Northgate will be responsible for supporting the new end-user devices until March 2008.

Quelle: Publictechnology, 28.10.2005