Council's vote of confidence

Brent Council last week announced a large investment in its fledgling call centre over the next two years, writes Dan Sabbagh.

The council believes call centres will become the dominant method for distributing government information ? ahead of digital TV and the Internet ? because public telephone access is ubiquitous.

Brent?s call-centre vision was showcased by the council?s director of technology, Bernard Diamant, at last week?s EPIC public sector IT conference.

?Our next move is to step up our call centre over the next two years, increasing staff numbers and opening hours, while making use of voice messaging to provide a service throughout the night,? Diamant said.

Local government is widely expected to embrace call centres in response to pressure from central government to deliver integrated consumer-friendly services.

Brent?s centre will run in conjunction with the council?s six high-street ?one-stop shops?, which provide all of the council?s 60 services.

Diamant said that his IT infrastructure will underpin the one-stop shops and the call centre via a single corporate data network standardised on IPX and IP.

The remote sites currently link up to core systems using terminal emulation software ? now being replaced by web browser front ends.

The council?s current Lotus Notes general information database and customer tracking system will evolve into a single database.