RIEP YoHr Regs Web Site



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Artemis Community Hub Outline

Author: R.M. Street – Barnsley MBC

Date: 9th November 2009

Version: 091109.1 – Final Draft

Table of Contents

1 Introduction 3

1.1 Scope 3

2 Approach & Outline Requirements 5

2.1 Business Pages & Functions 5

2.1.1 “What do I need to do?” 5

2.1.2 On-line Access to Forms 6

2.1.3 Targeted Update Communication 6

2.1.4 Communication of Events & Training 7

2.1.5 Business Forum & Networking 8

2.1.6 On-line Self Assessment & Risk Assessment 8

2.1.7 Business Staff On-Line training 8

2.1.8 Promotion of Compliant Businesses 9

2.2 Local Authorities & Regulatory Services Officers 9

2.2.1 Document & Experience Sharing 9

2.2.2 Targeted Update Communication 9

2.2.3 Sharing Initiatives across the Region 9

2.2.4 Staff Forum & Networking 9

2.2.5 Support Compliance with the European Services Directive 10

2.2.6 Regional Collaboration of Response to Government 10

2.3 For the General Public 10

2.3.1 Provision of Regulatory Information 10

2.3.2 Link to Further Information 10

2.3.3 Information on Local Business Compliance 10

2.3.4 Compliments, Complaints & Communications 10

3 Information Sources & Site Maintenance 11

3.1 Information Sources 11

3.2 Site Maintenance 11

4 Other Considerations 12

4.1 Those without on-line access 12

4.2 Promotion of web site 12

4.3 Long term support 12

4.4 Other languages 12

Artemis Community Hub

Introduction

The purpose of this note is to bring together and record a range of ideas for the Artemis Community Hub and to promote discussion and feedback. It is not a formal requirement. These will have to be produced in due course for each of the areas of development. It is a collection of concepts, possible solutions and design considerations

The RIEP YoHr Community Hub aims to fulfil a number of ambitions:

• Partnership, collaboration and coordination;

• A shared vision for Regulatory Services;

• Improved Business advice and support;

• New approaches to regulatory compliance;

• Better customer service and accessibility for businesses and citizens;

• Improved customer perception;

• Increased brand identity and profile of Regulatory Services;

• Modernisation and new ways of working;

• Improving local outcomes and public protection

• Reduction in the cost of regulation for LAs and Businesses

These simple statements embody a wide range of factors and there are few simple answers. For a business to comply it needs clear timely guidance and communication as to what it needs to comply with, how to comply and where to go for help. It needs to be able to access this information when it needs to and it needs to be kept up to date with relevant change. Business needs to be able to trust the advice it is given and to feel that the authorities are there to help them rather than just to judge them. For the Citizen it needs to promote engagement and provide better information. For regulatory Services it needs to help create a shared vision across the region to promote collaboration and consistency of regulation. For service staff it needs to provide improved communications and a resource of reference information and experience.

The programme attempts to address these needs on three fronts:

• By reviewing and improving service organisation and working practise

• Through support to the introduction of mobile working equipment, tools and processes to improve communication and service delivery whilst reducing unnecessary contact time.

• By the creation of an on line regulatory services community hub and information source for use by businesses, regulators and citizens

The programme aims to reduce costs for local authorities and business by working together across the Yorkshire and Humber region.

1 Scope

The development of a regulatory services’ Community Hub for the Yorkshire and Humber region will facilitate the above aims as part of a range of region wide initiatives. This document outlines the proposed functions of the Artemis Community Hub site to enable understanding, discussion and development planning. This is a major suit of work and no doubt further ideas will be proposed. It cannot all be done at once and will need prioritising and developing using a phased approach. Many of the items will require the identification of suitable information sources and the means and funding to keep the information up to date. It is a high level initial view and will need to be followed up in due course by detailed project plans, and requirements definition.

For businesses the Community Hub could:

• Provide a channel for business to find targeted regulatory information and advice based on a question and answer process.

• Provide direct contact information for the appropriate regulatory services for business’s location and activities.

• Provide on-line access to forms including where possible the means to complete and pay for applications and licenses on-line. This includes the requirements for the European Services Directive

• Communicate updates or changes to regulation or advice focused on the specific activities of the business. This could include warnings and advice about scams and other local issues to the businesses and other organisations likely to be affected.

• Communicate events and opportunities for businesses to get together and to meet with regulatory services and each other. This would include online booking.

• Provide a forum for businesses to share their experiences and seek help from similar businesses in dealing with regulatory compliance.

• Provide on-line self assessment and risk assessment facilities.

• Provide on-line training for businesses and their staff, especially for age restricted products

• Provide a means to promote “achievement” in terms of regulatory compliance – scores on the doors.

• Provide access to on-line training and self assessment tools

• Provide a forum for business to business peer support

For local authorities and their officers the Community Hub could:

• Provide intelligence data and client record maintenance about local businesses.

• Provide a place to share documents and experience, both good and bad, in developing and delivering regulatory services including new ways of working.

• Provide a source of reference for the latest versions of policies and good practise.

• Communicate updates or changes to regulation or advice to staff including on-line training on new requirements, policies and procedures.

• Keep staff informed of what is going on in the world of regulatory services for both local and national initiatives.

• Provide an audit trail of officers take up of updates or changes to regulation or advice to staff including on-line training on new requirements, policies and procedures, and to issue reminders.

• Provide a channel to communicate and share initiatives, developed by individual authorities, across the region.

• Provide forums for staff to discuss issues and share their experience in order to help support each other through the use of social networking tools.

• Support compliance with the European Services Directive

• Allow authorities across the region to develop a regional response to government.

For citizens the website could provide:

• A source of local regulatory information including contact details.

• Information about the level of compliance of local businesses

• A way for Citizens to provide their opinions on business compliance, good or bad

• Links to further information from central government.

• A channel through which complaints or questions could be submitted to their local regulatory services.

Approach & Outline Requirements

Where ever possible the approach will be to build upon existing developments and tools. The structure of the Artemis Community Hub site will be such that functions developed for one purpose may be adapted and used for another with minimal cost. All aspects should be scalable to allow for a gradual take-up by local authorities across the region.

Provision will be made to update or manage content by a number of people across the region, by providing suitable access controls and permissions. The site will store information about businesses and due regard will be given to data security and data protection.

The content or use of the site is divided into three areas, business, staff & citizens. These areas are heavily interrelated and will share much of the same data and processes. Where ever possible data entered once will be reused for later interaction and will be linked to back office systems.

The region is made up of some 29 authorities covering environmental health, trading standards, the Goole and Humber port authority and the fire service teams.

1 Business Pages & Functions

To enable business to stop and restart sessions and to save re-entering data, a simple password and email address registration process would be provided. A guest option could be provided for those who wished to remain anonymous. This registration would be used for a number of the functions of the site and allow preferences, permissions and other information to be maintained by the user, such as news letter sign-up and contact details maintenance.

1 “What do I need to do?”

The aim of these pages is to provide an interactive question and answer session to enable businesses to find what regulation they need to comply with and what permits or licenses they need. The aim is to provide key pieces of information for each regulation or permit/license:

• A description of the regulation or permit and its purpose with links to it’s legal definition where available

• Guidance on the pre-requisites and actions needed to comply with the regulation or to obtain the permit, including access to on-line forms where available. These should be in plain English.

• Contact information of the appropriate regulatory services team for the location and activities of the business to obtain further help or guidance.

• Information on costs, timescales and renewal of permits or licenses.

The process would flow through a series of question and answer sessions with subsequent questions being based on the answers to the previous set. The answers for each set would be saved on completion of the set. This would be capable of modification or update at future sessions and would also be useful in providing a picture of the business activities for the regulatory services before first contact with the business. A further use for the information would be to pre-populate “areas of interest” for sending targeted information about regulation and changes to regulation.

The completed session could be stored on-line, output as printable web pages or a pdf document.

Design

The information collected and the responses supplied should reflect local as well as national regulation. The structure of responses should be based on an agreed set of regulated business activities. These should be organised groups according to business areas e.g. food related, petroleum related, fire safety etc. Each activity should be allocated a tag or identity number that will be used by content authors to link information to business areas and businesses.

2 On-line Access to Forms

In conjunction with the above application forms could be provided on-line. Ideally these could be completed and submitted on-line along with payment, along the lines of the European Services Directive. Alternatively, perhaps as an interim position, forms could be printed and completed off line or filled in on-line then printed for signing. Having an online set of forms would save printing and distribution costs, and means that the latest version of the form was always available. Where ever possible forms should be pre-populated with data already supplied.

Design

At present the forms are customised by each LA at the very least by the inclusion of their logo. Ideally a standard set of data needed should be agreed across the region and if the data is already available then the form pre-populated with the option to change the content. Copies of forms for saving locally should be in pdf format, using tool such as Adobe forms.

Where possible, the data from the forms completed on-line should be directly input into other back office systems thus saving admin hours and the risk of keying errors.

The need for hand written signatures should be questioned for those completing forms via a secure web site with prior registration along the lines of that used by Companies House or HMRC

3 Targeted Update Communication

These communications or news flashes will provide business with updates or changes to regulation and good practise that is specifically targeted to the kind of business activities the individual business is engaged in. The aim here is to address the issue of keeping business informed whilst at the same time not sending large volumes of information that have to be sifted through to find what is relevant to the enterprise. These updates would not normally be sent more often than once a month unless there is an urgent exceptional need to provide information.

This communication channel could also be used to inform businesses in a particular area of scams or other local issues that would affect them not so much based on the nature of their business but on the basis of location. It could also provide a means of informing business of events or training sessions being provided by the local authority that are relevant to their activities.

Businesses could sign up on-line for the news flash using a simple tick box form. For those businesses that have registered with the website and completed the question and answer session in 2.1.1 above, the form could be pre-populated with their areas of interest. The option to receive the news flashes would be included as part of the Q&A session.

Suitable processes and access permissions will need to be developed to enable the creation and maintenance of the news flashes. Some of the content will be “national” as a result of changes to legislation or guidance from central government, some of it will be “local” depending on local bylaws and local issues such as events and scams.

“National” information should be generated on a region wide basis to enable savings over each individual authority tracking and distributing changes. “Local” information would be generated by existing local environmental health or trading standards teams. The key here is that the local teams have the relationship with the local businesses.

The same or similar information would be of use to regulatory services officers – see below in 2.2.2, and for blogging or maintaining a “latest news” section of the regional web site.

The more businesses that sign up for and read the news flash the better, it should help business remain compliant and reduce the need for routine interaction between regulatory services teams and business. This should reduce costs and enable regulatory service officers to spend more time with those businesses that need further support to achieve compliance.

Subscription to the news flash service should be included in the standard scripts and information held about businesses so that officers visiting premises can either follow up news flashes and get feedback on their usefulness or encourage take-up either by completion of a paper form for later data entry or directly through their mobile computer equipment. Promotional leaflets could also be distributed at shows and events or through Business Link.

Design

Potentially there are a large number of subscribers across the region. To facilitate the creation, management and distribution of the targeted news flashes, a bespoke database and scripting will be required. The database will contain the geographical and contact details for each subscriber as well as their subject choices for inclusion in their news letter based on their business activities. The website/database will need to have facilities for registration and maintenance of customer’s data and preferences, by the customer.

News information will be associated with one or more business activity and will be tagged as such on entry to the system. Scripting will need to ensure that when a customer has selected a number of choices relating to their business that only one copy of the information is sent.

Newsflashes would not normally be sent more often than once a month. However if there was a need for urgent communication for example to warn of a scam in a particular area then additional messages could be triggered.

News content from a wide variety of sources (see section 3) would be input on-line using web forms designed for the purpose. The form would capture the content and the related business activity, to match it with customer areas of interest and the timing of the message. For messages that have a limited geographical area of interest then this could be set either using a range of postcodes from a pick list or by selecting areas on a map. Scripting would then match customers to that area from their post codes to create a distribution list.

For those businesses that do not have email access, the system could assemble a printable version of the newsflash. This could still be tailored to the individual needs of the business and could be bulk printed and mailed to save costs.

A news letter archive should be created with on-line searchable content. There should also be an option to view on-line all the items available for a particular news flash not just those in the businesses preference list.

4 Communication of Events & Training

The distribution mechanism created above could include the ability to inform customers (businesses) of upcoming relevant trade events, opportunities to meet with regulatory services officers and training sessions. This would be handled in the same way as any other news item except they may have a combination of geographical as well as business activity type selection for distribution and would normally be distributed as part of a scheduled update message.

Design

Provision should be made for online booking of attendance at events and training including the payment of fees where appropriate. Alternative payment methods should also be available. Content could be generated either locally of regionally. Payments management should be set up to allow for collection at either a local or regional level, perhaps using functionality created to support the “European Services Directive”. This would be determined dependent upon decisions and movement regarding regional organisation.

5 Business Forum & Networking

Facilities could be provided through topic based forums or blogs for businesses to share ideas, experience and issues with each other (and regulatory services). This could be useful for gathering business views on government proposals in order to represent those on a regional basis. It would also help to identify the main topics of concern within the Business Community, to enable more targeted information and support.

Consideration should also be given to using the hub to provide a mechanism for established businesses to provide peer to peer support to each other and especially to help new businesses to become established. The use of such a channel need not be limited to regulatory matters.

Design

An initial framework of forums would probably be needed but moderated facilities to add new ones should be available to allow for new topics as they arise.

6 On-line Self Assessment & Risk Assessment

Self assessment and risk assessment are increasingly promoted by government as a way of reducing regulatory work load in a number of areas. However the use of self examination also may have benefits for business in reducing visits from regulators by enabling them to prepare themselves and check their level compliance. This would avoid service of improvement notices and subsequent follow up inspections. It could also provide an opportunity for those businesses that go beyond the basic level of compliance to promote their achievement. This could be supported by placing inspection and self assessment reports on-line for citizens to view (and comment on). Self assessment could also help businesses show that corrective action had been taken promptly, following an inspection visit.

7 Business Staff On-Line training

To reduce the amount of time spent in supporting business compliance and to reduce costs for businesses, on-line training could support a number of areas. These include;

• Awareness of age restricted products and acceptable forms of ID

• Self and risk assessment

• “How to” sessions for things like food safety, health and safety

• COSH regulation

Course material would need to be developed and this service could perhaps be charged for. There may be conflicts with commercial training interests. It may be possible to link some courses to basic level NVQs.

Provision should be made for date stamping, storing results on-line and perhaps the printing of certificates for successful completion of the course and any associated testing.

Design

Business and staff identities would need to be captured and managed in order to provide a record of completion. Access should be secure as results could be used to prove due diligence by a business. A printable certificate of successful completion could also be offered

8 Promotion of Compliant Businesses

Making inspection and self assessment results available on-line could be used to promote good businesses (from a regulation point of view), along the lines of the scores on the doors scheme. Allowing the completion of on-line training certificates and printing them out may also be seen by business as a way of promoting their good compliance, in a similar way to the display of food handling and hygiene certificates. This would have two main benefits: The publication of such information should help to drive up the appetite to comply and the consumer would be given better informed choices about where to purchase goods and services.

2 Local Authorities & Regulatory Services Officers

1 Document & Experience Sharing

Part of the aim of the Community Hub is to provide searchable on-line access to reference information about regulatory services, policies and procedures. In addition to a reference source the site should also provide ready access to inspection and other reports. This will allow other teams such as the Fire Services access to EH or TS information. Appropriate studies and any other relevant documentation should be made available.

Access control may be needed on a number of levels for sensitive information and for update or editorial control.

Design

The two key design elements for this element are up to date sources for legal, policy and practise information such that the latest version is always presented, and a good, preferably heuristic, search tool be provided. If heuristic search is not available, comprehensive Meta tags will be needed for the library content.

If practical documents should be served directly from LA document management systems to avoid the task of library maintenance and associated version control.

2 Targeted Update Communication

This functionality is similar to the newsflash facility for targeted updates for business. The only difference is likely to be the content although much of that may be common. It could be used to notify staff of changes to legislation, new policies/procedures and training courses. The email tracking and “click through” functions could be used to monitor staff take-up on new information relevant to their roles, and to issue reminders. The communication can also be used to inform staff of events and training opportunities both on and off line.

Design

The basic concept should be the same as that for the newsflash. It may be desirable to have different approaches to the user preferences/targeted information sign-up depending on how much control over the choice of content is devolved. There are likely to be different dimensions to the categorisation of email content from those associated with business, such as the LA body the employee works for.

3 Sharing Initiatives across the Region

Every LA funds its own initiatives into areas of local concern. Unfortunately these concerns are not unique and often the research is duplicated. By putting the plans and outcomes of such studies on-line and making them searchable much effort and cost could be saved. By proposing such studies and inviting comment, it may encourage collaboration.

4 Staff Forum & Networking

This is similar to the business function in section 2.1.5. Some regulatory service officers have already created their own Facebook page to share experiences and knowledge. Unfortunately many local authorities do not allow access to social networking tools such as Facebook so alternative approaches such as traditional user groups or forums may be useful. However in the longer term a way of coping with access to the likes of Facebook and twitter will need to be found as staff (citizens etc) will prefer to use services they are familiar with.

5 Support Compliance with the European Services Directive

The European Services Directive requires LAs to provide on-line access to processes, forms and payment methods. This could be provided through the YoHr Web site along with the ability to download or complete on-line forms and applications or to pay for licenses or permits.

6 Regional Collaboration of Response to Government

Web 2.0 tools and cross regional communication provided through the web site could enable a unified response by the 29 bodies that currently make up regulatory services, to government and other initiatives. This would create a more powerful impact than the 29 bodies each making their own. It would also facilitate joining together with other regions.

3 For the General Public

1 Provision of Regulatory Information

The Community Hub could provide guidance and contact information to the general public about the services provided by regulatory services (public protection). The content would need to be presented in plain English and carefully structured to make it accessible. The content should be searchable and carefully Meta tagged to avoid information being missed through failure to use exact official names for services etc.

2 Link to Further Information

If the web service is to act as a first point of contact for citizens then apart from local content it needs to provide external links to further advice and information from central government, the third sector and other sources. This will potentially require engagement with a wide range of stakeholders.

3 Information on Local Business Compliance

The site could publish inspection reports and other compliance related information online for feedback/comment by citizens and businesses. This could enable Citizens to express their views on businesses both good and bad. Additionally the site could enable Citizens to provide comment on businesses where there is no current report. The views expressed would need to be moderated and could provide a source of additional intelligence for regulatory service teams about issues relating to business compliance between visits.

It could also provide a way for good businesses to promote themselves and encourage better or higher levels of compliance.

4 Compliments, Complaints & Communications

Anyone who has used an on-line purchasing site such as eBay or will be familiar with their vendor rating system and their importance to sellers on such sites. An adaptation of this process could provide a means for citizens to rate local businesses to the benefit of other customers. There are services such as the South Yorkshire Motor Trade Partnership that set out to give an indication of quality and trustworthiness of businesses but such services are expensive to run. Such an on-line service could provide a means of achieving the aims of such services at a much reduced cost. There would still be a need for moderation of comment and resolution of disputed review but the general public will become increasingly familiar with such an approach and it would allow a significant coverage by business area. The intelligence gathered could also be useful to regulatory services staff in performing risk assessments of businesses for the planning of inspection visits.

Information Sources & Site Maintenance

1 Information Sources

Key to the successful function of the website and the forums is a continual flow of relevant, accurate and timely information. Currently communication is through a diverse range of media and from a diverse range of sources across departments, LAs and the region. Part of the object of this programme is to bring together these and gain efficiencies through a saving of duplicated effort. That said there will always be a need for local tailored input and the solutions must allow for this.

One approach being considered is to use a commercially provided information reference source. Such a source could provide core reference data and interpretation on new government legislation in the form of guidance, policies, procedures and standardised forms. This could then be automatically distributed through the email communication channel to appropriate staff and organisations. Depending on the nature of the change and the information, these updates could form the basis of newsflash content for businesses. However it is likely that some moderation of content and language will be needed before onward distribution to business. This could still be performed at a regional level rather than repeated by every authority. Such a centralised service ought to save money through a reduction in duplication in effort.

In order to establish the potential cost benefit of such an approach baseline cost data for hours spent in interpretation and communication and the costs of other purchased information services will need to be established. Charges by information providers are likely to be on a scalable basis in proportion to the number of authorities and/or users.

A second key to the usefulness of the website is the ability to search and find information when needed. With most current LA websites this is difficult unless the precise name of the data is already known. Unfortunately outsiders do not necessarily know the terms used by regulators and indeed not all regulators use the same terms to describe things. The efficient function of the site will depend on both a comprehensive use of Meta tags to identify items and the provision of good search tools that ideally can perform heuristic searches. It is likely that external providers of regulatory information will provide suitable search tools and their data will be appropriately tagged.

2 Site Maintenance

The complete community hub will be a complex site. If best use is to be made of the information supplied through the site, and to simplify the version control and management of documents from the document library, there will be complex and substantial linking with LA back office systems across the region. This will necessitate a movement towards common standards for information held about customers. In order to allow the creation and update of content for both local and regional information a range of different levels of access permissions will be required. These will need to be managed centrally or regionally.

For the service to function with widely distributed contributors with differing levels of access, a series of policies and procedures along with training materials will be needed. These will need to be maintained and updated as the hub functionality develops. Process development will also be needed to integrate the functionality of the hub into existing regulatory service delivery processes.

The continuing interest and commitment to the hub will depend on the quality, relevance and timeliness of the content and to some extent to the quality of presentation. This flow of information and its targeted delivery will require some form of centralised coordination and editorial management.

Other Considerations

1 Those without on-line access

The increasing use of web solutions as a means to communicate information and provide services could create a divide between those citizens and businesses that are connected and those that are not. Whilst free or low cost access is available to all in places like Public Libraries this may not be sufficient to ensure fair communication with all customers.

The emails produced by the system may include interactive content such as links to further data or feedback forms. Little can be done to replicate this level of functionality in a printed letter. However the email tools can reproduce newsletter content in a form that could be digitally printed. This would create an XML or similar file containing a customer’s postal address and their preferred or selected content. Customer preferences would have to be manually entered from application forms. The XML file could be sent to a printing, enveloping and bulk mailing service to save postal and other costs.

2 Promotion of web site

To gain maximum benefit from the proposed development, the services provided by the community hub will need promotion to all its customer communities. For the pilot news flash use would be made of the existing North Yorkshire Trading Standards mail list. To further roll out the Newsflash to businesses across the region there will be a need to collect email addresses as part of business contact data. This will need to be built into the routing checking of contact details by service staff when inspecting or communicating with businesses. Special promotional materials could be made available and distributed by post, through business organisations or at events. The services could also be promoted through business groups and other web sites such as Business Link and LA web pages.

Promotion of the site to staff could be through traditional staff briefing or communication channels or through departmental email lists.

Promotion to Citizens could again make use of other web sites, leafleting and traditional media such as local press, radio or TV filler adds. Leaflets could be distributed at council offices, libraries, doctor’s surgeries etc.

3 Long term support

The RIEP funding should be sufficient to develop and demonstrate the components of the Artemis Community Hub. The aim is to fund sufficient development to prove the concept and the potential benefits. This should provide a clear cost/benefit basis for LAs to fund the long term support needed to maintain the service.

The costs of the service fall into two main types:

• Fixed i.e. not scalable for things like hosting, initial and future development

• Scalable i.e. Costs that vary with the number of LAs or customers using the service. This would apply to items such as the news flash service and the commercial provision of regulatory data, practise and procedures.

Generally the more LAs that sign up and the more customers register the less the cost per LA or customer. A funding or sustainability model will be developed over the next few months. Costs for individual LAs will likely be related to their population size.

4 Other languages

The site and newsflashes will initially be developed in English only. Provision can be made to link to contact details for those who want information in another language. In principle there is no reason the language preference should not form part of the newsflash registration service and this in turn could be used to deliver pages and documents in that choice. How far this goes is limited by funding rather that the service capabilities.

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