Citizens across Suffolk benefit from Suffolk County Council every single day. From health and social care to infrastructure and highways management, the main priority for this administrative authority is ensuring citizens are looked after. With a forward-thinking mindset, Suffolk County Council turned to Blue Prism for intelligent automation, hoping to deliver a significant, positive impact on their citizens.

Challenge

Suffolk County Council must manage a huge amount of sensitive data on cases in adult and children’s social care. The administration has an inherent responsibility to keep sensitive information safe and secure, but also accessible to appropriate teams and partner organizations, so cases can be managed efficiently and accurately.

In order to deliver better quality and more efficient services for citizens, the Council looked to break down barriers between partner organizations, such as NHS, local government and law enforcement. For example, it coordinates with the local police force when the welfare of citizens is in jeopardy. Police referrals for citizens with a welfare concern were coming into the contact center, then waiting to be manually processed into the social care management system. High volumes — 800-1,200 per month — meant requests could sometimes be queued for up to a week before being added and allocated to a social worker.

Suffolk County Council needed to streamline this service to ensure that citizens get access to the support they need as quickly as possible as well as freeing up contact center employees’ time, so they could focus on proactively helping citizens.

Solution

In 2020, Suffolk County Council implemented a Blue Prism digital workforce throughout their organization. Alongside the NHS Trust, they are now pioneers of intelligent automation in Suffolk, using their knowledge to help smaller public sector groups follow suit and provide citizens with expedited services.

Upskilling team members to understand the benefits of intelligent automation helped alleviate any fears of digital workers. Now, the Council has established a secure, robust development plan, with solid governance processes in place. 

In addition, the police welfare process has been fully automated. As soon as the referral comes in, digital workers load data onto the system and allocate a social worker. Work that once took up to a week is now completed within the hour. This has not only helped the team divert stretched resources from paper work to working with citizens who need immediate support, but has significantly improved the experience for those who are affected by police welfare checks.