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News Release 
 
Date: 20 January 2005
 
For more information contact Tony Seymour 0191 211 5076 

Local Councils reach Excellence Finals

The five Councils in Tyne and Wear are celebrating today after receiving national recognition for working together on new electronic services through the Tyne and Wear ICT & e-Government Partnership (TWICT).

A massive number of Nominations from across the UK were made for the inaugural e-Government National Awards, run by PublicTechnology.net (a free e-Government & IT news & jobs service) supported by the Cabinet Office e-Government Unit and Socitm, and sponsored by Intel and Jobsgopublic.  

The aim of the awards is to celebrate the achievements of the strategies and people which drive the modernisation of public services and to recognise the vital contribution of technology to the UK public sector.  

TWICT was a finalist in the ‘e-Government Excellence, Local Government Team’ category for its work in establishing the ‘Open:tyne&wear’ network of on-street information kiosks across Tyne and Wear.  

Representatives of the Partnership travelled to London yesterday (19th) to receive their Finalists Award from Ian Watmore, the Government’s Civil Servant in charge of modernising public services through technology.

Announcing the finalists recently, Ian Watmore said:

”For many organisations, technology has fundamentally changed their relationship with customers – and customers demand more of the organisations that they interact with. From being able to bank online, to buying our groceries or booking our holidays, many of us have enjoyed the benefits that technology has offered us over the last few years.

“There are many innovative services being provided across the public sector which very often don’t get the publicity and reward that they deserve.  I hope that these awards can play a part in addressing that.”

Alan Holt, Chair of the TWICT Partnership and Head of ICT & e-Government at South Tyneside Council said:

“We are really proud that the work we have done with our colleagues in the North East has been recognised nationally as being at the leading edge of 21st Century local government.

“Embracing technology is key to providing modern and effective council services.  We are already working to increase the range of council services offered through the kiosks, digital television and the internet, and on new initiatives to deliver even more joined up services.”
 
The ‘Open:tyne&wear’ kiosks project revolutionises the way in which people can access services by uniquely providing a single point of access to each council’s services and tourist information that the public can use while they are out and about.

•	More than 40 on-street touchscreen kiosks have been located across Tyne and Wear; a number of the kiosks are in ‘village’ locations
•	‘Open:tyne&wear’ gives everyone easy access to up-to-the-minute electronic services irrespective of whether they have a computer or any IT skills – research has shown two thirds of users have never seen their council’s website.
•	The kiosks generate a quarter of a million extra customer contacts each year and the busiest kiosks get more than 90 users each day.
•	The majority of the kiosk services have been externally funded through SRB, NRF, NOF and ODPM e-Government sources.
•	By jointly procuring the kiosk and portal services, working together saved the five councils around £40,000 in administrative costs alone. 
•	Through TWICT, the councils have also established interactive services on Sky, Telewest and NTL digital TV.

More on the awards can be found at:
http://www.publictechnology.net/awards/index.htm

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