Geographical Information Systems (GIS) can improve public service efficiency by helping target resources to areas of highest need, delegates heard at Headstar’s annual event GIS in the Public Sector (
http://www.headstar-events.com/GIS09/ ).
Health and social care resources can be skewed towards areas with a high elderly population, for example, while areas which display low levels of recycling can be targeted with promotional campaigns, said Glyn Evans, corporate director of business change at Birmingham City Council. “We want to be able to shape our service offerings based on the demographic of that population”.
GIS has long been viewed as a specialist back-room area of council services, but it was now ready to move to the mainstream and become part of core service planning and delivery, Evans said.
Other innovative uses of GIS by Birmingham include a soon-to-be-trialled ‘digital assistant’ offering live information on traffic flows and car parking either online or to any mobile device enabled to receive GPS (global positioning system) such as in-car sat-nav, mobile phone or BlackBerry device.
The assistant enables users to input their destination and receive a planned route, including walking directions and bus information, updated with live information in real-time. A separate user at the destination point (such as the relative of a young person) can also access the journey information live and view an expected arrival time.
The project forms part of a digital transport project undertaken by a consortium including the council, Birmingham Science City Partnership, Microsoft and map developer Shoothill. The group hopes to make Birmingham England’s first “intelligent city” by creating an integrated, fully digitised transport network.
Birmingham also uses digital maps in its contact centres, where staff can pinpoint the caller’s property on a map and quickly bring up information relevant to that location.
