The council must provide services for the entire borough of Merton, some 168,470 residents. The Council provides services to the residents and businesses of Merton in four departments:
- Education, Leisure and Libraries
This department is involved in working with schools, libraries and youth to maintain a high level of achievement in the area. It also evaluates the Leisure facilities in the area and relates them to other departments. It also works to ensure equality of opportunity for all through the services it provides, its commitment to inclusion and its contribution to the social and economic regeneration of the borough
The Environmental Services department is the largest in the council and aims to maintain and improve the local environment and economy of the Borough through the delivery of quality services and through regeneration and partnership initiatives. Its services are wide ranging, affecting everyone living in, working in or travelling through the Borough. It is involved in many areas, for example regulation, which includes development control, building control, environmental health and trading standards, highway licensing and parking enforcement, and environmental maintenance which includes refuse collection, street cleaning and highway maintenance
The Finance Department provides the Council's Financial Management Framework. It rigorously manages the council’s budget to help managers control expenditure in their relative department. The Finance Department also collects all monies from residents and businesses and tries to make these payment methods more accessible using the Internet, Merton Link and the Call Centre facility. The Department also strives to make the financial documents of the council easier to understand and read.
- Housing and Social Services
The Housing and Social Services department is responsible for the management of housing solutions in the area and Social care for residents. It’s responsibilities range from the allocation and management of Council Housing waiting lists to evaluating and inspecting Childcare services in the borough.
Merton has recently been examining ways to make access to services easier for all its customers.
It has also been looking at improving links with its suppliers, agencies, central government and other organisations it has to work with. The aim is to build services around the needs of the customers, with improved responsiveness and quality. In order to achieve this goal, Merton will make full use of information technology (IT) to deliver services seamlessly and at times to suit the needs of the citizen.
Within the next four years customers will be able to access services through the Internet, digital televisions, and mobile phones, as well as walk-in and telephone customer contact centres. This project will be called ‘e-merton’, and will run from now to 2005. The e-merton project is designed to provide access to services electronically, and will help Merton meet the Government’s target of having all services available electronically by 2005.
However, the Council recognises that personal contact will still be necessary to meet the diverse needs of customers. Also, the Council will ensure that nobody is excluded from receiving modern service delivery due to their status, special needs or location.
The IT system within the council spans the whole organization and every Council Officer has their own workstation. The workstations are used for E-Mail communication and personal management as well as general typing duties. The Council also owns large industrial drawing scanners for the input of development and architectural drawings for Building Control (Planning) applications. Digital cameras are also used for working in the field and providing evidence for Environmental Services investigations.
The area of the council I shall be focusing on in my study is a new Council Benefits and Building controls system recently installed by a St. Albans IT company. The system covers the whole of these areas from paying council tax online to scanning and cataloguing architectural drawings for building plans, covering three departments in the council. I shall be studying the installation of the new system, problems, training etc and the evaluation of the system by users. My contact within the council, my father, will provide extremely good links with IT department administrators and to documents relating to the recent installation and evaluation of the solution.
