How mobile is your local council? It's a question likely to be asked more urgently as summer progresses. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is planning to launch an e-government project to promote mobile working in local authorities across the country. It aims to recommend best practices for field workers; it will review the suitability of mobile solutions and will draw up common technical standards for interfaces. The business case for the initiative is being reviewed and Whitehall insiders expect it to be launched in a few months' time.
Councils such as Lewisham are already piloting mobile initiatives. Staff are using PDAs to report housing repairs; to put together environmental reports about incidents such as graffiti; and social workers are using tablet PCs to assess the needs of elderly pensioners.
Simon Berlin, head of e-government for Lewisham, says staff are responding enthusiastically to new mobile technologies. "We're not meeting the resistance you sometimes meet with new technologies."
Social workers in Lewisham report that tablet PCs are more acceptable than laptops to pensioners as no screen goes up which can sometimes act as a barrier to conversations. The new devices are also enabling staff to spend more time in the community rather than in the office filling in forms. During an assessment interview, care information is inputted on to a tablet PC. The customer signs it, and the data can be swiftly uploaded into the relevant council database.
Cambridge county council is using tablet PCs in a similar way. "In our experience so far, the customers are not fazed by the technology. They like the fact that only one person is coming and asking them questions and they don't endlessly have to repeat their name and address," explains Ian Laughton, modernisation manager for Cambridge county council.
The forthcoming national mobile project will share experiences of mobile initiatives and explore ways of equipping councillors with PDAs. They can thus report requests directly into council systems to prevent information going astray.
But, inevitably, there are issues that could thwart the dawn of a new era of mobile councils. Birmingham city council has been experimenting with mobile surgeries for reporting housing repairs. But the council has found that costs can quickly escalate. "You can set up a half-day surgery. It becomes so popular that it becomes two days and the ISDN bills on that laptop can become very expensive," explains Derek Crook, head of IT for the council's housing department.
Private e-government software suppliers have given a guarded welcome to the government's latest technology project. "There is a great temptation to implement mobile technologies for its own sake. It's very easy to get carried away with the latest whizzy technologies. The government should define its ultimate objectives and allow the private sector to work in partnership with local authorities to meet those objectives," says Simon Parkes, managing director of Civica Systems.
Some councils regard the introduction of mobile solutions as an opportunity to slash accommodation costs by encouraging staff to give up traditional desk space. But the cultural management issues that will arise from introducing mobile working in the local government arena is likely to be problematic.
Other concerns centre on the investment in the infrastructure and the cost of mobile devices. Security and privacy will also have to be tackled. What happens, for example, if a council worker loses a mobile device containing personal health data?
Many e-government champions are aware that mobile technology is also likely to change the scope of people's jobs. A street inspector might be able to use his PDA to carry out tasks traditionally performed by an individual in a housing department office. If implementations are not managed carefully, mobile technologies could generate industrial relations issues.
Despite these hurdles, analysts agree that mobile solutions still have plenty to offer local government if they are well targeted. Nick Jones, research fellow for Gartner, says: "Local authorities have lots of business processes where mobility can help."
