Oldham Councillors embrace new dictation technology to aid them in Council work

Oldham Council is a modern, forward thinking local authority, providing local people in the Borough with a full range of essential services. The Borough is divided into 20 municipal wards, each of which elects three councillors who serve a four-year term.

Engaging local residents and getting them actively involved in local government is a priority of Oldham Council. The council wants to understand the needs of its local communities better, but in order to achieve this it will have to listen more closely to the views of the local community. This will require councillors to spend more time out and about in the local community.
Yet with the majority of councillors holding down busy day jobs, their time is precious. With so many demands on their time, technology can play a crucial role in helping councillors achieve a balance between their public duties and private commitments.

Nowhere is this more apparent than that at Oldham Council where digital dictation provider, WinScribe has been helping councillors to reduce the administration burden by transforming their everyday working practices.
Debbie Tootill, system supervisor at Oldham Council explains, “We wanted a dictation system that would reduce the administration burden on council members and also give them the flexibility to work remotely.”

After a competitive tendering process Oldham Council chose WinScribe. Tootill continues, “The WinScribe system connected those council members using the dictation to a central server system, giving them access to a team of secretaries located in the council offices.
WinScribe currently assists Council members with their routine correspondence and official reports. The system streamlines the dictation, transcription and workflow management process, providing the Council with a cost-effective and time-efficient solution.

With WinScribe now in place the councillors can dictate from any location, IT security access permitting, using one of the many digital hand held recorders available, or alternatively dictate using their mobile telephone. All dictation is automatically downloaded onto the council’s central WinScribe server, ready to be transcribed by one of the team of secretaries.

The WinScribe software allows councillors to select which secretary or typist is allocated the work, or opt for the system to automatically allocate jobs to the next available transcriber.

Prior to the WinScribe system being installed, councillors used shorthand and hard copy for their correspondence and general administration, which would then be allocated manually to secretaries for transcribing purposes. This proved to be an inefficient way of working as councillors had to spend their time making and delivering the shorthand notes and then liaising with the team of secretaries to identify which documents needed to be processed. Such practices also made it difficult for secretaries to manage their workload effectively.

As well as time delays, analysing workflow also proved impossible under the previous system. It was difficult for councillors to track the status of work in progress.

Tootill continues, “WinScribe’s dictation software has been extremely successful with the selected council members who are currently using the system. The initial training was a quick and easy process, especially for those who were IT literate.

The system has proved easy to use as well as having tremendous operational benefits. Work can be monitored to recognise potential bottlenecks. For example, in a run up to the local elections there is an increase in the use of dictation amongst councillors, and WinScribe will allow you to manage the workflow effectively due to the flexibility of the system.”

Tootill continues, “ROI has never been easy to evaluate but with WinScribe there is a reporting mechanism available which allows you to monitor job time and efficiency, and there are also performance indicators built into the system.”

It’s been so successful that we have already made plans to roll out to newly elected Council members after the local elections have taken place next year. I’m confident it will be a smooth process, based on our experience so far of working with WinScribe.”

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