Digital transformation in the City of Aberdeen

Demand for public services and welfare support is growing across the UK. Like many local authorities, Aberdeen City Council is increasingly required to do more with less. Emerging digital technology is helping us meet the needs of the city’s 230,000 citizens, including our most vulnerable residents, whilst absorbing those budget pressures.

Aberdeen City Council has been something of a pioneer in this area. In 2020 we were one of the first UK local authority to introduce Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Every child in Scotland must have a plan mapping out their educational and personal development. Before RPA, teachers had to retype individual plans into a central system, a task that could take hours. RPA automated 55 of the 59 processes involved. Loading time for each plan has reduced to as little as five minutes, saving approximately 18,000 hours of teachers’ time per annum. Education staff and partner agencies like social work can now access vital information with much greater ease at any time of day. And children, of course, enjoy more classroom time with teachers.

More recently, Aberdeen City Council used Microsoft Dynamics 365 to modernise its social work caseload. Previously, 80% had been handled offline, using everything from Excel spreadsheets to hand-written reports. Building a comprehensive picture of someone’s need was challenging. Opportunities for prevention and early intervention were potentially being missed. Using D365, we were able to unify data collection, giving practitioners a richer real-time understanding of people, and again letting partner agencies like NHS Grampian and Police Scotland securely access vital information. The council improved its average handling time for a single case by 218 minutes, leading to more than 3,000 new assessments every year. We are saving an estimated £2 million on manual data collection. As with RPA, the real-world winners are our staff and customers. Social workers – who helped design the caseload system – are better placed to act before problems become critical. Longer term, we can leverage data to predict demand and inform policies.

Much of the council’s transformation has been made possible through a strategic partnership with Microsoft. Transferring data and applications to their cloud has made it easier to harness their suite of tools in developing bespoke software solutions. This year we deployed Microsoft 365 Copilot, an AI-powered productivity tool. A first tranche of 700 staff across a range of services have been exploring how we might use Copilot to augment their skills. AI has helped automate repetitive and time-consuming daily tasks, such as the production of formal meeting minutes, reports, policy guidance documents, and translation services. Staff have been freed up to engage directly with those most in need. It has truly been a seamless process, with immediate productivity and capacity gains for staff serving across mental health services and housing.  Credit goes to our tech champions, who have managed the roll-out and in their enthusiasm have adopted the name the “Copilot flight crew”. Neurodivergent employees have been empowered through Copilot’s ability to summarise and structure documents, set the tone, and provide feedback on work. It’s just one way that technology is truly adding value. Early indications are an increase in job satisfaction across services and improved community engagement. A win, then, for our staff, for our customers and for the taxpayer, with the council poised to save another £2 million every year.

So, what next?

The council is currently piloting a telephony solution capable of pushing out individual messages and customised resources to residents via Facebook Messenger. Technology is allowing us to connect with customers as never before, driving community positive conversations. Amid all the excitement, it’s worth saying that everything we do ties back to the Local Outcome Improvement Plan, which was based on a Population Needs Assessment and maps out the way in which multi-agency partners can work together to ensure Aberdeen is a place where all people can prosper, regardless of their background or circumstances. We are converting technological success into social success – lifting people out of poverty, strengthening community resilience, improving the quality of life, making sharper decisions. Those who need our help most are the ones benefiting directly from digital innovation.

Aberdeen City Council’s investment in technology is ultimately an investment in people.

Andy MacDonald, Executive Director of Corporate Services, Aberdeen City Council