Caerphilly county borough council takes communications seriously. A regular award winner, most recently taking the PRide Gold award in 2005/6 for its Fostering Campaign, the in-house team believes in taking a creative approach to engaging people with the council's services and campaign initiatives. So it came as no surprise that the Council decided to add the impact and flexibility of Connectvision multimedia messaging to internal communications at its new £20 M council headquarters.
The fifth largest local authority in Wales, Caerphilly county borough council employs around 9,000 people making it the largest employer in the area and 10th largest in Wales. The council delivers a wide range of services to the 170,000 people living in the borough including education, environmental services, highways, leisure facilities, planning and social services. It was the decision to build Penallta House, a new £20 M council headquarters, at Tredomen Park near Ystrad Mynach, that prompted the council to deploy multimedia messaging.
The web editor Caerphilly Council was asked to assess Connectvision. “As soon as I saw Connectvision, I knew it would make a big difference to internal communications in Penallta House. The flexibility and ease-of-use of the system meant it was going to a communications channel we'd want to use for a whole range of services,” he said.
Penallta House is designed to help the authority deliver more streamlined services by locating staff from a number of geographically spread buildings into one central location. The new building, which boasts a range of ‘green’ credentials, has already become a landmark feature in the area and will provide the council with modern office accommodation fit for the 21st century. Accommodating some 650 staff, it is the main civic base for the authority and includes the council chamber as well as committee meeting rooms, conference facilities, Registrar functions and a comprehensive Customer Services facility.
Caerphilly council's web site is the principal information resource on the council's services. It has recently added text messaging for news of particular services such as What's On, leisure, roadworks, council news and live music. Consistent with the council's integrated approach to communications, Connectvision is also the responsibility of his team. “We chosen to call multimedia messaging service 'Caerphilly In Vision' to encourage service teams within the council to view the system as another way of getting the message out, much as they do on our web site, but with a far greater opportunity to engage viewers,” he explained.
Connectvision is used to deliver 'Caerphilly In Vision' to a network of large LCD screens located in the entrance and restaurant areas as well as a dedicated screen for the Customer Service area on the ground floor. Screen content can segmented such that the public area, restaurant area and customer service areas each have completely different content. The screens in the public and staff restaurant areas are split into three areas: the largest part of the screen for council information and campaigns, the right hand column for the latest council news while the bottom of the screen is a scrolling RSS feed for urgent messages which can be updated in seconds.
For the Customer Service centre, Connectvision has been integrated with a queue management and ticketing system. Visitors to the Customer Service centre are given a ticket when they arrive and, as an advisor becomes available, the largest part of the screen automatically changes to show the visitor's number and which advisor they should speak to.
Campaigns so far have included Fostering, the Cyber K8 text messaging service and Community Safety. A further 20 campaigns are planned over the coming months including IT Security for council staff. The RSS feed is used to announce events, welcome new staff and visitors to Penallta House, as well as posting timesheet and expenses reminders.
He believes 'Caerphilly In Vision' will become an essential part of the Caerphilly county borough council's communications strategy: “As council service teams begin to experience the impact of Connectvision multimedia messaging in promoting and engaging people with their campaigns, so demand for space on 'Caerphilly in Vision' is certain to increase.”