DEPARTMENT FOR WORK AND PENSIONS (DWP) are responsible for the welfare and pensions policy. It is the biggest public service delivery department in the UK, serving more than 22 million customers.
The department’s priorities are to simplify the welfare system, encourage people to work, reduce poverty, reform pensions, enable disabled people to fulfil their potential and improve its service to the public.
“The main benefit of Glasscubes is the time we save creating, issuing updates and controlling the feedback. We’re operating more efficiently as a department and we have introduced an easier way for our customers to receive our updates and respond to them.”
MARK BROWNE
Project Manager, (LADS Programme) DWP
The Challenge
To find a better solution than email to communicate regular updates to 382 local authorities throughout the UK and manage feedback.
Mark Browne, Project Manager of the Local Authority Data Sharing Programme explains, ”DWP was initially relying on email and e-bulletins to provide the updates that local authorities needed. However, this proved to be an extremely time consuming and inefficient process that created many duplications of content and the need to respond time and time again to the same repeated questions that were being received from individual local authority members. So we set about exploring a better way of doing things.”
DWP turned to an online collaboration service which removed the reliance on email and created a secure ‘go to’ online workspace that could manage two way communications in a better way. The solution was successfully implemented with a supplier at that time, delivering immediate results and proving that online collaboration far surpasses email for group communication.
After the initial term, being a central government department, DWP was then obligated to conduct a review of the marketplace to ensure it was following the government's best practice procurement guidelines.
The Solution
Using the ‘Digital Marketplace’, the governments approved directory for Cloud Service providers, a selection of potential suppliers were accessed by using the MEAT (Most Economically Advantageous Tender) criteria. Glasscubes was selected as the most compatible organisation to fulfil DWP’s requirements.
Mark Browne explains....”We chose Glasscubes because they were able to demonstrate the required functionality and service provision that was needed, the product was the most user friendly to use and it represented the best value for money offering a saving to DWP. The migration was painless, within one week we had moved over 1,500 users onto Glasscubes and maintained the service provision to the local authorities. Glasscubes support throughout the project has continued to be excellent and responsive, if we have a query they respond immediately.”
The Local Authority Support Team at DWP now use Glasscubes secure online workspaces to communicate to over 1,500 local authority staff based throughout UK.
“If there have been any issues on the information that the local authorities are expecting, we react quickly and post the communication centrally and notify them of it. Sometimes expected updates might be delayed or a change occurs so our central team can quickly post an update. Keeping the local authorities informed and up to speed with reliable information, improves our collaborative working relationship and this additional layer of communication strengthens our process,” said Browne.
“We have set up several secure workspaces which DWP controls access to. We invite relevant local authority members to the workspaces and set their access permissions. DWP then posts content to the workspace and notifies only those users with permission to access the space of any new updates. The collaboration is two way so the local authorities can then reply to any updates with any questions they might have and the DWP can centrally address these. What is great, is the communication is transparent across the workspace which keeps everyone informed and reduces repeated questions being received and having to be answered.” said Browne.
"Glasscubes are very supportive, with new features being discussed and added regularly. A great team that is always ready to help resolving our user queries."
CRAIG MILLAR
Local Authority Data Sharing Manager, DWP
