While many businesses are increasingly using laptops rather than desktop PCs, Bolton Council is going further than most organisations. It is looking to cut the amount of office space it needs by mobilising much of its workforce.

Along with other local authorities, Bolton has been asked to cut back on its spending, and property assets have been identified as one way to achieve this.

“As a local authority, we have value for money reviews, and the council has many buildings, [so] the need is to reduce the number of these,” said Mario Devargas, assistant director for corporate resources at Bolton Council. As a result, fewer staff will be office-based, while more will be out and about delivering services or working from home. The council expects to deliver this goal by changing the way it provisions systems.

In future, staff will have a single client each, and this will be a laptop by default, according to Devargas. “My guess is that within the next five years, we will get towards 70 per cent of users mobile and 30 per cent using desktops, but desktops will be restricted to those working in fixed places such as our contact centre,” he said.

The council approached Dell as its chief supplier in summer 2007, and signed a contract in October. Asset management will be simplified by standardising on a minimum set of configurations based on Latitude D630 laptops and Optiplex 755 desktops.

Rollout of these started in November, so the project is still at an early stage, and the council expects it will be about 18 months before it starts to see any real efficiency benefits. Some details have also yet to be decided, such as whether laptop users will be equipped with some form of cellular connection, or rely on Wi-Fi hotspots for access to central resources.

The council also hopes to reduce the amount of paper used in administration by scanning documents and making greater use of electronic forms. Staff also have access to a SharePoint system for meetings and collaboration.

This will lead to an increase in the council’s storage requirements, so Dell has outfitted the authority with several central repositories based on EMC storage area network kit. These will archive everything from documents to email, instant messages and voice calls, according to Devargas, with a facility to search everything from a single console.
The council has specified that all new systems are capable of running Windows Vista, although it will be at least a year before this is rolled out, Devargas said.

“We cannot afford it right now, and we have a lot of old applications that need work to make them run with Vista,” Devargas explained. The council will either upgrade to newer versions, or “cut its losses” and switch, if a Vista-compatible solution cannot be found from current application providers, he added.