Hampshire moves to e-booking to improve services

Council helps citizens to book services online

County council improves access to service for its citizens

Hampshire County Council is to implement an e-booking system to allow citizens to book council services online.

The council saw the potential of online booking after investigating an e-booking system for minibus driving courses.

‘Every department has a need for online booking,’ said Hampshire’s project manager Carl Grattage. ‘For example, our Recreation and Heritage department will offer the opportunity to book its guided walks around country parks online.’

The project can be divided into two parts says Grattage: a front-end web interface for taking bookings and a back-end database for managing that data.

‘You do not want someone registering a birth next to someone registering a stillbirth, so the data has to be managed according to more complex criteria than simply an open timeslot,’ said Grattage.

Online booking will deliver cost savings, improve customer service and generate staff efficiencies for the council’s 100 users.

‘It is about giving people the option of booking online and we are hoping the public will take up online booking instead of using the telephone,’ said Grattage.

The system, due to go live in October, will allow citizens to make online payments with a bespoke e-payments system.

Butler Group senior research analyst Teresa Jones says the system will provide a more comprehensive service to the public without increasing staff numbers.

‘The start-to-finish time for making appointments manually is quite long so online booking will save staff time,’ said Jones.