Digitized workflows help council improve citizen services

About the client

The City of Lincoln Council provides local authority services to Lincoln's 97,541 residents. It has 650 employees and engages with several contractors. The Council is supported by seven members of the IT team and one in the change management team.

Two years ago, it decided to undertake a complete digital transformation and cloud migration initiative to modernize how the Council operates, delivering better value for money while protecting citizens’ privacy and security. It also wanted to effectively meet the needs of service users in housing, business support, and answering citizen queries.

The challenge

The Council had an almost entirely on-premises infrastructure and aging estate that ran on Citrix. Numerous legacy systems and more than seventy discrete back-end applications fragmented the environment. Data was challenging to collate across the organization, and staff collaboration was difficult.

To modernize, the Council wanted to transition to Microsoft 365 for central communications and collaboration. Its small and busy internal IT team focused on day-to-day infrastructure and lacked the deep expertise required to migrate to Microsoft 365. A neighboring local authority where SoftwareOne had delivered a similar project, and had realized significant benefits from implementing Microsoft 365, recommended SoftwareOne to the City of Lincoln Council.

To strengthen its continuity plans, the Council also wanted to move to Microsoft 365 from solely on-premises infrastructure. This would assure continuity in the event of fire, flood, or disaster. With early migration during the COVID-19 pandemic, all employees, including the 45-strong Strategic Command group, could continue operating.

The solution

The City of Lincoln Council team chose SoftwareOne as its technology partner. As a Microsoft Gold Partner with more than 30 years’ experience working with Microsoft, SoftwareOne was well-placed to deliver consultancy and technical guidance, and software advisory and procurement.

The first step in the Council's digital transformation was to migrate its 650+ workforce to Exchange Online, alongside a roll-out of new devices. As well as email, collaboration and productivity tools, it is using Microsoft 365 to automate internal admin and business processes, and has begun using Microsoft Power Platform for Business Intelligence (Power BI) and workflow automation. It also used Microsoft Bookings to control entry to the Council buildings during the pandemic to limit numbers and ensure the safety of visitors.

The council is also using SoftwareOne’s PyraCloud, a single platform, to transact software licenses and cloud usage, understand its licensing position in real-time, and ensure its software estate is continuously cost-optimized. This helps the council identify savings and better manage costs.