Central Management
Central Management consists of expenditure and income not directly attributable to the divisions. This expenditure and income is allocated to the divisions using appropriate cost drivers.
Expenses include running of council offices, overhead costs such as printing, photocopying, security and telephone costs, and expenses of the following Departments:
- Corporate Services
- Human Resources
- Legal Services
- Computer Services
- Finance
Corporate Services
Ownership of Facilities ‘Spaces for Change’
Throughout 2012, the Council has continued to explore ways of using our various buildings and facilities to welcome communities and other agencies to work together in a focused way to provide enhanced services for our citizens. The County Enterprise Board, Dodder Valley Partnership, South Dublin Volunteer Centre and the Jigsaw Project are now located in County Hall, Tallaght and the County Childcare Committee in Clondalkin Civic Centre. In addition the ‘Big Picture’ building in Chamber Square, Tallaght will now be developed by County Dublin Vocational Educational Committee as a Youth Café and Youth Services Facility.
Customer Care
The Customer Care Centres at Tallaght and Clondalkin continue to provide a frontline service in relation to all Council services. A highly qualified team provides informed and professional advice, in accordance with the principles and response times set out in our Customer Charter. In 2012 approximately 100,000 customer queries were processed by the Customer Care staff who have access to the databases that are in operation throughout the Council, which enables staff to deal with enquiries at first point of contact for over 80% of our customers.
Often, it is our customer care staff who first raise alerts and identify issues when they occur. Rapid communication processes directly to teams on the ground enable faster response times and resolution of customers’ issues. Phone, email and web information postings ensure relevant updates and timeframes.
Customer relationship management systems, developed in-house, record customer enquiry information and allow fast access to back end data. Tracking and monitoring of these enquiries ensure quality and efficient service. In addition, statistics show continuous increase of enquiries year by year. On average 100,000 queries are resolved per annum. Emphasis is on offering more choice to our customers, to access services, make payments, or request information using online services and these methods of contact continue to increase.
Customer Care manages the payments office in Clondalkin Civic Centre as well as providing customers with assistance and information on a variety of Council services. The footfall to this office is on average 2,000 customers a month. The Centre also provides accommodation to local organizations for meetings/public consultations. A nominal charge is made to cover security and utility costs.
Ongoing Customer Surveys by the staff provide information on service improvement but also give valuable feedback to the Council’s training programme. Customer Care and the porter staff are also involved in monitoring post levels and ensuring discounts are availed of through An Post’s bulk postings. There is a saving of approx €10,000 per annum due to this process.
Telephony
Telephone communications are managed by Customer Care and statistics are generated by the system for resource management and departmental performance purposes. This enables managers to manage staff deployment. It also highlights recurring business issues allowing resolution of more common type of queries faster.
Major cost reductions have been achieved in the areas of mobile and landline business. Current mobile providers are contracted to provide best deals in running cost and service delivery. The operation of this new telecommunications technology has resulted in a 33% reduction of central landline bills. Throughout 2012 two more Council depots have been connected using VOIP to avail of cost savings and to allow business levels and trends to be mapped and reported on through the Customer Care centre. In 2013 it is proposed to tender for a mobile contract under a new central framework for Government Departments and Local Authorities agreed by the Department of Finance.
Telephone communications are central to service delivery and the system is updated continuously. Following a risk management process, a Disaster Recovery Protocol is under development and is expected to be in place in early 2013.
Communications Unit
The Communications Team plays a key part in making sure accurate, timely and relevant Council information is made available to members of the public, elected members and Council staff. The unit is also responsible for the Mayor’s Office and the promotion of South Dublin County Council’s services and initiatives. This is done using a wide range of communication channels to ensure information is accessible and interesting to all audiences including:
Social Media: During 2012, the Council continued to utilise and develop the social media platforms to promote or communicate services to the community. Social Media provides us with an opportunity to engage in conversations with our citizens and respond to criticism and misinformation through effective media monitoring. In times of limited financial resources, social media is relatively inexpensive and enables the local authority to increase our message reach in the community. Since 2009, we have developed these resources and trained our staff to provide real time information, create awareness campaigns and promote civic events through social media platforms.
Our aim is to deliver real citizen centred services by sharing information and receiving feedback from our citizens. The Council provides information about the many traditional services we deliver and our innovative initiatives in the areas of the Arts, Libraries, Social Inclusion, Sports and Recreation, Business/Community Development, Road Safety and Environmental Awareness Programmes. Social Media provides the Council with a wonderful opportunity to share this information with a wider audience at relatively little cost.
The Council now has in excess of 3,200 Twitter followers with more than 1,600 Facebook accounts ‘liking’ the Council's page and receiving updates and nearly half a million visitors on our YouTube Channel.
Corporate Publications: During 2012, the unit produced the ‘Annual Report 2011’ and ‘South Dublin County Today Magazine’. The magazine aims to promote local democracy and the many community, business and educational services that the Council delivers to enhance the quality of life opportunities for our citizens.
Membersnet/Staff Intranet/Newsletter: The Communications Unit manages the compilation and distribution of the internal staff newsletter ‘South Circular’. In addition the unit provides information and news items for the membersnet and intranet; ensuring elected members and staff are kept up to date with important council news at local and national level.
Media Monitoring/Press Releases: The Communications Unit aims to develop and maintain good relationships with the national and local media. In 2012 over 400 media queries were processed and 125 press releases issued providing information on Council initiatives and services.
Filming requests: The unit processed and co-ordinated the facilitation of eight requests to film TV commercials, documentaries and programmes and feature films during 2012.
Events: Over 200 events were attended by the Mayor in 2012, reflecting the Council’s interaction with local community groups, schools, businesses and other public bodies. Highlights included Chinese New Year Celebration, Engineers Week, National Bike Week, The Haunted, Social Inclusion Week, Red Line Book Festival and Christmas ‘Unwrapped’.
Promotion of the Irish Language
South Dublin County Council continues to develop and support the Irish Language on a county wide basis, some of the key activities include:
- Fix your street, a major success for SDCC is also available for the public as Gaeilge on www.deisighdoshraid.ie and is being used by the public, with 114 hits since it was launched.
- The Second Irish Language Scheme was agreed between South Dublin County Council and the Minister of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, with particular care being taken to promote and develop Irish on websites by SDCC and to continue with all the commitments made in the first Irish Language Scheme.
- Irish is now available in all the interactive Self Service Points in South Dublin Libraries.
- Irish is included on www.southdublinlibraries.ie Online Language Learning, which is free of charge and available to all our members.
- The home page of www.athcliaththeas.ie has been developed to include daily notices and news articles.
- Over 111 events took place throughout South Dublin County, celebrating Irish, which catered for over 7,500 people.
- Facebook was used for the first time in 2012 to promote Seachtain na Gaeilge - www.facebook.com/snagact - and was well received by the public.
- Irish Classes and conversational groups were held throughout the library network.
- From January to November 2012, 282 documents were translated in-house, giving a potential saving of €13,000, with major projects being the Annual Report and Deisigh do Shráid.
- There were 441 queries registered under the Irish Office/Gaeilge throughout the Council.
National Disability Strategy/Disability Liaison/Access & Equality
There was no National Disability Strategy funding available from central government during 2012. Therefore we continued to improve and enable access for disabled people in South Dublin County through focusing largely on non capital actions. The Equality brief was added during 2012.
Key achievements in 2012 include:
- South Dublin County Disability Advisory/Consultative Panel hosted a County seminar on the National Housing Strategy for Disabled People in October. During 2012 the Panel also made submissions on universal design to the Draft Newcastle Local Area Plan and met with Libraries regarding the new Library Development Plan.
- Tallaght as the main South Dublin County Town was included in the final shortlist of seven cities for the Access City Award 2013.
- The Disability Liaison/Access & Equality Officer actively participated in the National Access Officers Network, the Equality Officers Network and the establishment of the Disability Studies Association of Ireland.
- Programme developed for the Council’s participation in National Accessibility Week 2012.
- 6 public facilities in SDC added to the www.accessdublin.ie Dublin Access Guide, with a further 9 to be added by year end.
- 15 cases dealt with by the Access Officer Service and Irish Remote Interpreting Service made available via Customer Care in Tallaght and Clondalkin.
Key actions for 2013 include continued development of Accessible South Dublin County including participation in National Accessibility Week 2013; ongoing support of the County Disability Advisory/Consultative Panel; minimum of 20 South Dublin County businesses added to www.accessdublin.ie, participate in Sencity Dublin (9th Feb 2013), roll out the NDA eLearning Disability Equality Module across the organisation and establish an SDCC Equality Action Team.
Procurement
Work on the development of the Council’s Procurement Policy and Procedures continues. Core staff involved in procurement received training in procurement and in particular, tender evaluation and framework agreements in 2012.
A number of corporate contracts were put in place during 2012 through the National Procurement Service whose functions are inter alia, to organise procurement of common goods/services, achieve greater value for money & efficiency, improve procurement compliance and ensure availability of procurement training. A number of these contracts are mandatory throughout the Sector and these include, ICT consumables, janitorial supplies, stationary and office supplies, advertising and energy supplies.
An upgraded eTenders website has been launched by the National Procurement Service which will provide all users with a central repository for all contract management and information. It will also allow suppliers to the Irish Public Sector to be instantly aware of the goods, services and supplies that Irish Public Sector bodies are looking to buy.
The Council is represented on the national network of Local Authority Procurement Liaison Officers and the National Local Authority Procurement Group.
Human Resources
Control of pay related spend has been achieved through strict control of overtime and staff numbers. Our staffing levels continue to decline following the loss of 65 staff through the Government incentivised retirement package in February of this year leading to a total loss of 371 staff since the introduction of the staffing moratorium in 2009. Within the context of these diminishing resources and the limitation imposed by the moratorium on recruitment as well as other National restrictive pay policies, we have maintained service levels through ongoing efforts to deliver services in innovative and cost effective ways.
Our staff policies are constantly under review to ensure they support the organisational needs and a detailed Work Force Plan is being undertaken to ensure staff are assigned to priority areas thereby maintaining levels of services to customers. The Work Force Plan involves a comprehensive examination of the current and future levels of frontline services provided, the optimum level of staff required to provide such a service as well as identifying the necessary competencies of these staff.
South Dublin County Council will continue to utilise the Public Service Agreement (Croke Park Agreement) 2010-2014 to achieve operational efficiencies and introduce structured change. Since the outset of this Agreement this Council has reported savings of €56M in updates submitted to the Local Government Management Agency, which reflects how progressive we have been in pursuing actions which result in efficiencies and reduce our costs. We have introduced National Level actions emanating from the National Sectoral Plan around the standardisation of terms and conditions for staff which is pursuant to one of the objectives of the Public Service Agreement.
The Council continued to employ the industrial relations mechanisms at local and national level to maintain stable industrial relations within the organisation throughout 2012.
Our Pensions Unit continues to deliver service in respect of the calculation of pension entitlements and retirement related matters to our staff. The Unit dealt with a high volume of enquiries as well as the calculation of entitlements for the 65 staff who retired by the end of February under the Government Incentivised Package.
Investment in Staff Training continued to be maintained in line with National requirements of 3% of payroll costs. We maintained current levels of training by sourcing high quality value for money courses and by developing in-house training programmes. We are one of five Local Authorities who are piloting the use of Competency Framework in the sector. This framework sets out the knowledge, skills, values and behaviours that underpin effective management, employee contribution and employee development. In response to the National Review on Performance Management Development System (PMDS) we implemented all the recommendations of the review and reinvigorated PMDS by integrating the Competency Framework model into the process. A key part of our Human Resource Strategy is our ability to cope with the loss of staff and the knowledge and skills that are lost to the organisation as a result. The improved PMDS model will support our HRM strategy in this regard by ensuring our approach to training and development is coordinated, focused and provides value for money. Our accreditation for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for our engineers and technical staff was retained following an Audit in September of this year. As staff numbers decline, structured systems of information and knowledge sharing are becoming increasingly important and we have completed a scoping report on the introduction of a Mentoring programme which will be rolled out in 2013.
We embrace the use of Information Communications Technology as an enabler to change and use interconnected sources of data and techniques to alter fundamentally the way in which we work. We operate an integrated HR/payroll system which records all staff details and allows us analyse data trends which assist in policy formulation or alterations.
Legal Services
The Law Department provides timely and focused legal advice to the Manager and various departments in the Council.
The Law Department continued to assist in policing the public realm by acting for the Council in prosecutions under the Litter, Waste Management and Control of Dogs legislation with 374 separate instructions received since the start of 2012.
2012 also saw further improvement in the use of the computer systems of the Debt Management Unit and the Law Department which brought about further efficiencies in respect of the recovery of rates due to the Council. Over 1,000 instructions for the recovery of rates have been received by the Law Department from the Debt Management Unit since the start of 2012.
The Law Department provided legal service in the traditional areas of advisory work, conveyancing and litigation and continues to see an increase in demand for legal advice in newer areas of law such as data protection, privacy, corporate governance and public procurement. During 2012, the Law Department in conjunction with the IT Department organised ‘in house’ training seminars to Council Staff on the legal issues relating to data protection.
Information Systems
Enhancing Local Government Services with IT
Information technology is changing how people think and perceive the world, fostering innovation and contributing to economic and social well-being. The Council’s information technology platform is supporting democracy, making local government more accountable, transparent and efficient, benefiting citizens, businesses and public agencies and increasing social equity by providing 24/7 access to information. Information technology is putting local government ‘at the service’ of the public.
Information technology does more than just affect the public’s expectations of and satisfaction with public sector performance. It also provides a way for local government to become more service-oriented and augments its ability to meet those expectations. Information technology is facilitating the development and implementation of public sector modernisation and many of the current projects are underpinned by the Programme for Government and incorporated into the Local Government Efficiency Review Strategy for Shared Services.
Fix Your Street
www.fixyourstreet.ie was launched as a service in 02/08/2011 enabling citizens to report issues to their local authority. As of November 2012 ‘fixyourstreet’ is now serving the areas of Waterford City Council, Waterford County Council, Westmeath County Council, Kildare County Council, Fingal County Council, Galway County Council, Dublin City Council and South Dublin County Council.
‘fixyourstreet.ie’ consists of a publicly accessible web site, built in-house on open source technology, with associated mobile technologies on which non-emergency issues such as graffiti, road defects, issues with street lighting, water leaks/drainage issues and litter or illegal dumping can be reported.
As committed to in the Programme for Government, issues raised on ‘fixyourstreet.ie’ will be responded to within 2 working days. The service is scheduled to be rolled out nationally by the end of 2012.
Current Usage Statistics
Some site usage statistics for visitors to the www.fixyourstreet.ie site are as follows:
For the month of October 2012 (previous months in brackets)
- Visits: 5,758, (3,643), (2,528)
- Unique Visitors: 3,775 (2,394), (1,538)
- Pageviews: 37,306 (17,038), (12,439)
- Pages/Visit: 6.48, (4.68). (4.92)
- Avg. Visit Duration: 00:04:36, (00:04:00) (00:03:56)
First year of operation statistics – 2nd Aug 2011 – 2nd Aug 2012
- Visits: 42,596
- Unique Visitors: 25,354
- Pageviews: 200,032
- Pages/Visit: 4.7
- Avg. Visit Duration: 00:04:07
Launch of new Corporate Website
During December 2012 South Dublin County Council will launch the new corporate Website www.sdcc.ie. The site has been redeveloped using an open source content management solution, in line with LGER Shared Services strategy for Website Content Management.
In line with international trends, government department websites are moving towards a service/task based menu layout and away from the traditional ‘departmental’ structure, enabling the citizen to see at a glance what service or information they require.
Launch of new Corporate GIS “OASIS” – Online Access to Spatial Information Systems
The new Intranet Corporate GIS web application – OASIS – officially launched in October 2012. The application meets the spatial information needs of South Dublin County Council in a fully integrated manner, accessing data stored in the centralised corporate database. All users have access to shared, complete, accurate, high quality and up-to-date information. Staff can search for information using either address, planning application reference number or financial rates reference number.
Oasis launches with OSi MapGenie as the default background map, but can also launch with OSI aerial photography.
Other GIS web applications (Intranet and Internet) launched in 2012 include:-
Other Websites developed or revamped and launched during 2012 include:-
Online surveys were provided for a number of initiatives to do with the provision of walking and cycling routes.
A facility to allow online submissions to various Local Area Plans such as Fortunestown and Newcastle was developed.
Data Protection
In 2012, the Information Technology Department assumed responsibility for all matters relating to Data Protection on behalf of the organisation. As Data Controller we must ensure that Data Protection legislation is strictly adhered to. We undertook a number of measures during the year to improve security of our electronic data including the following:-
Intrusion Prevention System Replacement
A new Intrusion Prevention solution including functionality for firewall, vpn (ipsec & ssl), antivirus/antispyware, anti-spam, email and web filtering was implemented during 2012. It can also provide application control, data loss prevention, dynamic routing for IPv4 and IPv6, end point NAC, SSL-encrypted traffic inspection, and WAN optimisation.
Smart Device Management
To ensure that data accessed through corporate mobile devices is secure, especially in the event that it is misplaced, stolen or believed to be compromised, all mobile devices synchronising with SDCC resources are subject to Mobile Device Management Policy applied by the Mobile Device Management System. This system was implemented during 2012 and enforces PIN and password protection as well a encryption of the mobile device.
Laptop Disk Encryption
Disk encryption software and device control software has been rolled out on a phased basis and has been extended to Members laptops to protect corporate data in the event of laptop theft or loss. Whilst laptop encryption protects the data on the encrypted hard-drive, data security can be compromised by the use of unencrypted external hard-drives, USB keys etc. Periodic policy review and staff awareness has been prioritised in this regard.
Local Area Network Upgrade
During 2012, the corporate local area network was upgraded to a converged, secure and scalable platform, supporting voice, video, data and wireless. A managed support service has been implemented and new reporting functionality provides detailed graphical and statistical analysis.
Firewall Upgrade
The SDCC firewall was recently upgraded to negotiate all connections at 1Gbps / Auto.
Backup WAN Link to GN
A backup WAN link to Government Networks has been setup for resilience in the event of failure of the main link so that no downtime of services will be experienced.