Information technology is integral to the service and is a major organisational asset. It enables effective service delivery, provides up to date information for advisers, critical information for clients, website support and a virtual private network (VPN) for bureaux.
The bureaux IT support desk consistently receives excellent satisfaction ratings and recorded a 98 per cent satisfaction rating in the 2007/08 Bureau Feedback Survey.
During 2007/08, £3.4 million was spent on developing and maintaining our IT network. We undertook a complete IT service transformation programme that will deliver both savings and improved services for Citizens Advice and bureaux.
Our VPN enables information to be shared in a secure environment and we have invested heavily in this to achieve long term savings, improved security, increased capacity and improved quality.
CASE is our electronic client management system. As well as recording client records, their enquiry details and the problems we help them with, it is increasinglyused to record client outcomes. CASE information is a powerful evidence base for our policy work and for reporting at bureaux, regional and national levels.
As we started 2007/08, 90 per cent of our members were making use of CASE. During the year we provided consultancy, training and support to ensure all of our members are able to make full use of the system.
Work was carried out during the year to upgrade the functionality of CASE. Measures to improve the system will continue during 2008/09. It is recognised that there are still performance issues around the CASE system and improving the performance is a major objective of Citizens Advice.
All bureaux submit evidence for use in policy work predominantly via the client case recording system and last year Citizens Advice said it would update the system so bureaux can analyse their own data. The updated CASE allows bureaux to analyse evidence to give a local picture to funders and policy makers.
Last year we said we would improve the functionality of CABlink, our intranet site for the service. We did make some significant improvements including an easier to use contacts search for bureaux and Citizens Advice staff. We are committed to improving the site further during 2008/09.
Citizens Advice in numbers:
There were over 720,000 visits to CABlink in 2007/08 with over 1,600 staff and bureaux signed up to the email alert function.
In 2007/08, 42,000 evidence forms were used for evidence research.
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