eDemocracy

At Esprit we have built on the experiences of partnering with some of the UK’s most innovative local authorities and developed an industry-leading web based solution that provides the mechanism to deliver on eDemocracy – helping to co-ordinate cabinet and committee management activities, quickly and effortlessly publish reports, agenda and minutes whilst improving public access to information.

Driven by the prime minister's e-government vision, local authorities are revising their internal decision making structures and processes with the introduction of scrutiny committees and decision call-in procedures. Councils are working to achieve improved efficiency while at the same time extending accessibility and delivering an increased public focus. Working within a timeframe of just 24 hours, local authorities are aiming to provide electronic access to reports, agendas, minutes and any other relevant documents covering issues spanning housing, social services and education.

Accessed and administered via a standard web-browser for fully distributed operation, our eDemocracy solution offers clear graphical views of decision making processes – automatically tracking decisions and their associated documentation as they move through the council’s business workflow processes. Interoperable and globally accessible, it allows councillors to monitor issues happening in their ward and provides direct access to revise or change documents as and when required.

Alongside improved access and greater clarity in the decision making process come overall improvements in internal communications and document management with councillors only receiving information they specifically request and have a genuine interest in – drastically reducing the plethora of paperwork usually encountered on a daily basis.

The eDemocracy Workflow
(click image to enlarge)

The flexibility of the underlying workflow modeller and information-publishing components, allow solutions to be precisely aligned with the specific needs of a council. A council can continue to refine their existing workflows and introduce new processes over time. These graphical workflows can be designed and administered with very little training or technical knowledge, allowing better management of internal work processes, ‘joining-up’ departments that have historically working autonomously. For example workflows can allow reports, minutes and agendas to be placed under scrutiny and visually tracked all the way through the decision making process. Such documents can be viewed, discussed, commented upon, and added to in a fully auditable manner.

Management and control of documents

A powerful underlying asset management engine delivers comprehensive version control on any kind of document or other electronic asset. Alongside full access control over who can view or amend documents the system also ensures all actions taken are recorded in a fully auditable manner. An integrated document scanning module ensures that the asset management engine also caters for traditional paper documentation including, for example, signed scrutiny process request forms, ensuring documents in all formats can be driven through the council workflows and delivered direct to the authority web site for public access.

Transparent public access

Reports, agendas and any other form of document can be made available in advance of meetings and minutes published within 24 hours of any decision being made – meeting the criteria dictated by the Modernising Government Agenda.

Our eDemocracy solution benefits from multi-level security features and, adhering to central government’s technical standards mandate, is Dublin Core compliant and conforms to both e-GIF and e-GMF.