Customer Engagement Team Inhouse Developments
The Iona vehicle permit service was rebuilt using Liberty Create to provide a faster, simpler experience for customers and staff. The new form carries out vehicle eligibility checks in the background, without adding unnecessary questions or affecting the customer experience. Automated business rules allow eligible permits to be issued immediately, while Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) checks supporting evidence such as Blue Badges and V5 documents to minimise delays in service delivery. Applications requiring further consideration are safely referred to staff, combining efficient automation with appropriate human oversight.
Watch our video to find out more about using IDP to reduce manual administration >
Allows visitors to the Oban Pontoons to pay for berthing charges and gain access to gate and toilet block codes.
Online customer facing booking form with variable payment (dependent on size of boat, length of stay) taken and associated back office application for management of bookings.
www.argyll-bute.gov.uk – complete redevelopment of the corporate site in 2022/23 and the first local authority in Scotland to use the Open-source Local Gov Drupal Project.
Some recent developments include:
- Visitor Levy information/consultation
- April 1st fee changes
- A new online application form for NDR Hospitality
- A new recruitment project/campaign to help recruit new employees
- Information for displaced Ukrainian people
CG/FSM is a form which uses OCR (Optical character recognition) to read text from evidence and confirm from the details submitted on the form in line with the conditions/requirements of the funding set by ABC / Scottish Government.
Due to the timing and complexity / requirements of this service the CG/FSM will be covered across a multi-stage process over a period of time.
Online form used to register children for primary school, choose between attending a school or homeschooling, register or request additional Early Learning Childcare (ELC), change an existing placement and apply for school transport if needed.
Educational psychology team requested an online form and back office portal to manage applications for Neurodevelopmental Assessments.
Referral forms were previously managed and processed on an area-by-area basis, but Education Psychology Team wanted to centralise the administration of referrals and use our system Create for the logging, tracking and management of referrals. Create is the key enabler for this change to centralise referral management and will bring a raft of process management improvements.
Online application form for applying for funding to help support strategic events and festivals. Includes relevant back-office application for viewing and processing applications.
Online application form for applying for funding support community projects. Includes relevant back-office application for viewing and processing applications.
A dashboard and series of online forms to gather feedback on Create forms, Oracle interactions, corporate website and internal Hub site.
Due to limitations in reporting capabilities of lead Education application SEEMiS the Education data team has a laborious process, to be completed at the end of each term, to repurpose data from report and present is suitable format for all 80+ schools.
An automation has been developed to:
- Repurpose data (one row per pupil to one row per pupil and attainment).
- Present data in desired format (including charts) in Excel with a separate file for each individual school.
Application built for Oban Airport staff to enter details of payments required for indemnities and landing fess (at Oban, Coll and Colonsay airports). This is linked to the secure voice automated payment services so that customers can phone up, enter their permit reference, be advised of balance due and make payment.
An online form allowing Food Business Operators (FBO) to log into a secure portal to upload documents required for Environmental Health’s Official Control Verification (OCV) process. This moved the existing process of email communication and documentation passing to a portal specific to the needs of the service. Little in the way of personal data is collected due to the process being pertinent to the FBO.
Environmental Health are required to carry out Official Control Verification (OCV), of food business operators. The process requires a large number of evidential documents to be sent and decisions to be communicated which was being done via email. An online application and evidence upload process was built along with a business case control solution based on the EH team’s needs.
Between July and October 2022, the team built an in-house solution for the end-to-end processing of Short Term Lets licensing using the Oracle platform and Civica online payment solution. Since initial go live the solution has been continually improved in response to changing Scotgov needs and through quarterly improvement sprints with the STL Team. Automated online Register, Scotgov stats exports and caseload control improvements have been made to enhance the experience for applicants and to reduce the processing burden on officers.
Senior management were aware of discontent from members with the incumbent Councillor Casebook application used by members to log and track enquiries and engaged with the team in February 2022. A full overhaul and rebranding to Member Zone took place with a new online interface for Member was agilely developed and live by May 2022.
A new version of the intranet went live in April 2025. This replaced the former website which was end of life and no longer fit for purpose. The Web Team worked on the migration project for 12 months, firstly auditing all the existing content on the site and working with services to recognise which material was still needed or what could be removed. The old site had been going since 2012 so there was a lot of information. We went from 10700 pages on the old intranet to 155 pages on the new site. All content that could be put public facing was moved to MCW.
My Council Works was originally set up with the intention of promoting news and success stories on a public facing platform. During the pandemic there was the need to get information out to all staff, but the intranet is only available to networked staff. While we have been working on the new intranet migration, we used this as an opportunity to move all HR content and policies to MCW. This was a huge job as the HROD team had to reformat their documents to be accessible to be on a public facing site. We worked with them to get their information on MCW and create a new dedicated section for HR.
New regulations, that came into force in 2020, mean public sector organisations have a legal duty to make sure websites and apps meet accessibility requirements. Our websites and online systems need to be designed so they can be accessed by everyone. This includes people with disabilities such as visual impairments, motor difficulties, cognitive impairment or hearing problems. As a team, we worked to get all documents (published after 2018) reformatted in an accessible manner and continue to make sure all new documents meet the required legislation. We have developed an online training course for staff to help raise awareness of this.
We have 67 school websites involved in our development programme. They were previously built on Drupal 7 but, like the council website, it needed to be moved to a new platform when this became end of life. Over the last few years we have been migrating all the websites over to WordPress. This has made them easier for staff to maintain and to keep them updated.