Thanks to The Meeting Factory, the City of Lincoln Council has been able to save a significant amount of staff time while improving access to information for the public.

The Challenge

The City of Lincoln Council wanted to improve the way it produced, published and distributed committee documents, to help make access easier for councillors and customers.

In the past the process had proved to be a time-consuming operation.

So, the key to the success of any solution would be the ability to save time and resources, work around existing processes and allow information to be published quickly and clearly for customers.

The Solution

Thanks to the Meeting Factory, the whole process of producing, distributing and publishing committee documents has been transformed, offering a wealth of time savings and information that is consistent and available quickly and easily.

And with the solution now live on the City of Lincoln Council website, it's easy for all to see the difference it has made. Just visit www.lincoln.gov.uk

The Meeting Factory is an agenda and meeting management system created by IT solutions company A Recipe for Success with the local authority market in mind.

Not only does it automate agenda and minute preparation it also has web publishing built in simplifying the process of creating and distributing agendas, minutes and supporting documents.

The software has been designed to help make the process as quick and simple as possible and agendas and minutes can be published simultaneously to web and intranet sites, bringing greater consistency and cutting the task in half.

Documents can be distributed as meeting packs via e-mail, pulling together minutes from previous meetings, agendas and supporting material and making it as easy as possible for committee members and the public to find the information they need. There is also the facility to publish confidential documents, offering access only to those people who have been allocated permission.

And as all of the e-mailed documents are stored in an archive you can search back to see what was sent when, and even view who has opened each mail.


Results

The benefits the Meeting Factory can bring were clear from the moment the City of Lincoln Council went live with the solution.

Project manager Lashelle Reed explained: We have found that it has saved us time in a whole number of ways, from no longer having to manually number pages to automatically converting documents to PDF.

"Previously two teams were involved in collating committee documents, manually checking, formatting and numbering the pages before turning each individual document into a PDF. It would be added to the website when the admin team got time, and sometimes other departments like planning would load their information on themselves as they couldn't wait for it to appear.

"If last minute changes were made, the document had to be manually renumbered throughout and there was potential for inconsistency, too.

"We weren't making it easy for our customers to get to the information they wanted. However, with The Meeting Factory, we just don't have to worry any more as the system pulls everything together at the click of a button and it is so much easier to make changes.

From a savings point of view it has allowed the admin staff who used to do the manual work on the committee documents to spend their time on other tasks.

Feedback has been really positive, with the benefits clear for all to see.

Lashelle said: "Our scrutiny officer refers back to agendas a lot and she has said it is now so much easier for her to find the information she needs to do her job. Before it wasn't clear how to find a specific report and the detail wasn't obvious. Now it is so much easier.

"Democratic services are very happy with the way it has gone, too. It has been nice to see it go live on the website and we can tell people are using it already.

The Meeting Factory has been developed in partnership with the City of Lincoln Council and a number of other local authorities, to make sure that it meets their needs.

"The ARFS team were keen to find out what we needed the system to able to do. After an initial discussion they put something together for us to trial. They were really open-minded and responsive to our suggestions and the resulting system is great because it allows us to do everything we want to do.

"We have had a great relationship with the ARFS team. Most times when you are implementing new technology especially with set solutions if you want to change something the answer is no. However, because we have been developing The Meeting Factory with them they have been very responsive and it's nice to find a solution that works around our business processes rather than having to change our business to fit the solution."