Cobweb Solutions aid Kent County Council in knowledge share
initiative between local authorities.
The Inter-Authority Partnership Unit (I-APU) of Kent County
Council (KCC), created to im
prove performance between local
authorities, has enlisted the services of Cobweb Solutions.
The Challenge
Senior officers at KCC and SBC, situated in different parts of
the country, required a means to easily and efficiently share
confidential information, collaborate on proposals and documents
and liase on a daily basis. Although some officers were willing to
travel to attend meetings, this was not a solution for day-to-day
liaison.
As this was an entirely new initiative Maureen Smith, business
delivery manager of the I-APU decided from the offset that she
required a management tool that would ensure the success of this
relationship.
Maureen Smith comments, “I felt in order for the first LGF
partnership to run to the best of its ability, I needed a means for
senior officers in Kent and Swindon to share documents in a variety
of formats easily and efficiently, whether in the office or at
home.
The Solution
A total of 50 people in Kent and Swindon are now utilising
Cobweb’s Hosted Windows SharePoint Services, which was brought in
to specifically cater to the needs of the flagship LGF partnership.
The SharePoint site provides the IAP-U, KCC and SBC the flexibility
to store, share and retrieve reports and proposals and the means to
prepare summary reports for steering group meetings.
Due to the confidential nature of the information being shared
on the KCC and SBC section of the IAP-U SharePoint website,
security was a key requirement. Senior officers and other key
parties in the LGF partnership have been supplied with a login and
password, ensuring the confidential information on the site remains
secure.
The programme is broken down into work streams and whilst all
have access to the general programme documentation, where necessary
it is also possible for personnel to have additional access
permissions and editing capabilities, which Cobweb tightly monitors
on their behalf.
Other security features within the Cobweb Hosted Windows
SharePoint Services solution includes a comprehensive antivirus
protection, daily data backups and secure access via SSL that
removes the need for expensive and difficult to manage VPNs.
Predictability of cost through Cobweb’s pay-as-you-go per user
per month SaaS pricing system also allows for the IAP-U to
keep costs down in response to the changing numbers of people that
might require access to the SharePoint site.
“I fully intend to use Cobweb’s Hosted Windows SharePoint
Services for future partnerships as we’ve been able to totally rely
on Cobweb for technical support. We plan to develop this programme
so that other high performing councils that have particular
strengths can share expertise with other local authorities, whether
that is in social services or a council that has executed a
successful cultural programme.”
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