A report to a meeting taking place next week reveals that a long running dispute about the Councils Customer Relations Management (CRM) system has been settled.

The wrangle, with a software supplier, has prevented the development and full roll out of the “Report It” and “My Account” systems

The implementation of the “Oracle Right Now” based system was supposed to have improved “social media consolidation and proactive management and integration across a number of back office systems facilitating automation, work allocation and monitoring”.

The Council says that phase 1 of work on the new system will be complete in about 7 months time.

This contrasts sharply with the assurances given to a scrutiny meeting in March 2016 when the proportion of customers forecast to access the Council “on line” (mainly for Council Tax and Benefit interactions) was expected to increase from 5% at March 2016, to 43% in March 2017 and to as much as 80% by March 2020.

It is far cheaper for the Council to address issues raised “on line” rather than through other options (personal visits, by telephone or Email)

No updates on these project forecasts have been provided in the latest report nor is there any comment on the financial costs to the Authority of the delays.

Council leaders have been announcing the imminent arrival of the new IT system for over 4 years. The Councils Executive last extolled its virtues at a meeting which took place on 11^th February 2016

NB. The Council has told us that a glitch, which prevented some images of issues being uploaded onto their full litter bin reporting system, has been fixed.