The IT Excellence Awards offer local authorities the opportunity to show how the use of an IT system or process has improved the provision of services within their community, and to highlight innovation and best practice.

Winner of the Local Government IT Excellence Awards 2007 - London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham: Customer Access Strategy
The customer access strategy is innovative and unique; Hammersmith & Fulham are truly putting the customer first. We believe that if you want to put the customer first, then you’ve got to know them better. We can’t improve their satisfaction without first understanding what matters to them. By prioritising our work on the basis of customer value and impact, we are transforming our organisation, improving service quality, cutting costs and systematically tackling the root cause of dissatisfaction with the council. Hammersmith & Fulham are using the data we gathered about our customers to drive real and lasting change. It’s not about quick wins it’s about a long-term vision and delivering real results.

Runner Up - North Lanarkshire Council: MySWIS - Mobile Single Shared Assessment
“mySWIS Mobile Assessment” is a tool that allows full Single Shared Assessments (including IORN) to be undertaken by staff from North Lanarkshire Council and partner agencies (including NHS) whilst in a client’s home or hospital ward using mobile technology. The solution operates real-time (or offline when necessary) allowing information gathered during the assessment to be validated against the back office mySWIS application then, once successfully validated, it is updated. The tool allows the provision of homecare services to be initiated at an earlier stage for the client, and for information to be shared, where applicable, with partner agencies.

Highly commended - Derbyshire County Council: Picture the Past
This unique partnership between libraries and museums in four local authorities, Derbyshire, Derby, Nottinghamshire and Nottingham, creates access to historic images reflecting the development of local communities. To date, over 65,000 images have been digitised and made available through libraries, and to everyone via the Internet. Indexing and searching tools have been created, enabling students and researchers to find relevant material and for local people to access images of their locality. Users can order and pay online for photographic quality copies. The project encourages co-operation and resource-sharing between partners and delivers economies of scale in the implementation of new technology.

IT Excellence Awards finalists	L-R Charles Ward, Intellect; Jackie Hudson, Hammersmith and Fulham; and Rose Crozier, Socitm