Create solutions that serve your communityEmpower everyone to drive innovation at a local level with a low-code application from Microsoft

The changing face of local and regional government

Transforming services to meet new expectations

Local government has demonstrated real agility under enormous pressure. But even so, between budget cuts, growing social care demands, funding reforms and commercialisation, there is still pressure to do more with less. It’s why so many authorities are undergoing such large-scale transformation.

Across the board, there are a number of key areas for transformation:

1 “The global case for customer experience in government”, McKinsey & Company, 2019

A new operating model

You are under pressure to do more with less, which includes flattening and reducing your organisational structure to create a more agile environment. This involves rethinking operating models and business processes, and adopting smart ways of working. Authorities are looking to oust siloes and democratise data for greater collaboration.

Service makeover

When governments offer better customer service, they have more impact on the outcomes that matter, from strengthening public trust to managing budgets1. You must take a customer-first approach from front-to back-office to ensure this outcome.

“Confidence that councils are embracing the opportunities new technology offers public services has fallen from 76% in 2016 to 20% in 2019”PwC

Channel shift

You must minimise the strain on services and reduce expenditure. The benefits of introducing new technologies to do this include lower costs (from disbanding expensive channels like face-to-face and telephony), 24/7 access to representatives, scalable and flexible infrastructure from cloud and SaaS computing, and enhanced accessibility.

At Microsoft, we are excited to help local and regional governments meet these transformation challenges with our empowering and modernising Power Apps tool. App development can build new agility and capability into local government organisations, but it is often perceived as a high-cost, slow, and arduous task. The development process, testing, security assurance, approval, and roll-out represent too many hurdles to overcome. As a result, legacy ways of working endure.

Microsoft Power Apps is designed to simplify the development of business applications, and empower your business users to innovate a broad range of apps that transform manual and outdated processes – all without overburdening IT, retraining, or outsourcing skills.

It does this by making the vast quantities of data stored in government systems such as CRM and ERP applications work for you in the most efficient, effective, and compliant way.

Low-code, more power

Power Apps integrates data from a wide variety of Microsoft and third-party sources, so you can build highly tailored applications using the valuable information at hand, no matter the purpose.

Power Apps gives you the flexibility to optimise your apps’ user experience and interface to suit specific tasks and roles. Create apps for any device from a blank slate, or start from a sample app built for common business scenarios, like expense reporting or site inspections.

The platform’s simple drag-and-drop design tool means your business users can create freely without writing code.

The power of transformation is in your hands

Power Apps provides a platform for innovation, modernisation, and digitalisation

A flexible platform you can trust

With Power Apps, you can:

• Create a culture of innovation and empowerment

• Build low-code apps in weeks to rapidly respond to citizen needs

• Build apps with restricted access and role-based security measures

• Integrate with the products you already use, including all Microsoft applications

• Connect to over 300 third-party cloud databases, APIs and services (and your on-premise stores)

• Rely on Microsoft’s built-in security and governance

• Scale and extend applications across Azure2

A suite of innovative tools

Power Apps is just one component of the Microsoft Power Platform, a suite of solutions that sits atop the data in your organisation, letting all workers, regardless of technical ability utilise it to drive business outcomes.

Unleash the power of data analysis with Power BI; automate organisational processes with Power Automate; and build low-code AI chatbots with Power Virtual Agents – all of which can be scaled and extended across Microsoft Azure.

2 Professional developers needed

Turn bright ideas into innovative apps that inspire change

Environmental health

A private tenant has contacted their local authority about a health and safety issue that their landlord has failed to fix. Usually, an environmental health officer (EHO) would inspect the property and take detailed notes and photographic evidence of any hazards, and send them to officers in the Environmental Health department for processing. This often creates a bottleneck as data transfers take time, and some jobs are in low connectivity areas.

Using Power Apps, the Environmental Health department has developed a user-friendly mobile app that can be deployed to all EHOs in the field. Now, when inspecting a property, the EHO can take photos and notes in-app during an inspection, which are uploaded to SharePoint Online once a connection is available.

The app contains all information pertaining to the case, so business users can have a single view of the customer and ensure any necessary action is taken. The tenant can view the status of their case by logging into their account on the council’s online portal.

Social care

Social workers were spending an average of 60% of their time writing, recording and processing case data on their computers. Yet, fragmented, siloed client record systems meant vital information was often not shared with other professionals, which had a knock-on effect to the care the authority gave to vulnerable children, and caused a strained relationship between social workers and families.

A team of civil servants created an app that would gather client information from each organisation involved in a case, including police and education services, so that there is an up-to-date single view of the child or young person, with the aim improving care and timely outcomes. The team use a role-based security function to ensure sensitive information like medical tests or psychiatric evaluations are only available to the pertinent workers.

The app allows the organisations involved in child care and protection to share information quickly to support quicker decision-making and effective risk analysis. The social workers can escalate cases quicker, and reduce unnecessary and intrusive visits and phone calls with families.

Workflow efficiency

A resident has reported fly tipping in their area via the council’s Dynamics 365 Web Portal. Once the ticket has been raised, it is assigned to an operative, which triggers a work order to appear in the operative’s Power App.

The operative can find the location of the fly tipping, read the case details and view any images that the resident uploaded at the time they reported the incident. Once the field worker has removed the rubbish, they can take a photo as evidence, include any notes, and check the task off their list. They can then move on to the next assignment.

Because the Power App is connected to Dynamics 365, office workers receive real-time updates from their field agents and make any necessary adjustments to workloads or scheduling.

Shropshire Council

Shropshire Council’s housing services and IT teams created an app that helps council employees provide support for the homeless. Previously, outreach staff would record on paper details of homeless people on the streets and pass it on to office workers to find support.

Using Power Apps, the team developed a fully bespoke app with specialist features that allow staff to take down the personal details of homeless citizens and find a suitable support package for the person in need. The data is stored securely in Microsoft Azure cloud, and displayed graphically using the business intelligence tool Microsoft Power BI. The app also automatically triggers alerts, such as when emergency response is needed.

Now, the process of finding a support package for homeless people takes as little as 10 minutes. And, the app cost less than £2,000 to develop.

“The products we have at our disposal allow for rapid development of bespoke solutions, giving us the opportunity to transform services and ultimately deliver better solutions for those we serve – whether that be residents, businesses or partner organisations.”Andrew Boxall, Head of Technology, Shropshire Council

Services built to last

Infusing digital capabilities into front and back-office processes

At a glance, Power Apps can help local governments transform by:

Enabling more efficient workflows and remote working

Removing or minimising manual and labour intensive tasks

Improving service design by enabling departments to lever data and analytics

Reducing inter-departmental fragmentation and uniting council services

Empowering workers and citizens to take control of their domains

Instigating a culture change with the help of Microsoft Catalyst, a transformation planning programme that employs Dynamic 365, Power Platform and Azure

Upskilling employees for the digital economy

Alleviating reliance on IT by building solutions within your own team

Transform local government with innovative low-code appsGet started with Microsoft Power Apps today

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