The esd toolkit is sometimes described as a “thriving community of peers, helping each other with similar problems”. It was created by local government for local government by way of many thousands of hours of voluntary resource and support and for the past four years has helped local government work together to meet common challenges. The nearly 10,000 people who use it have found efficient, innovative and exciting ways of solving challenges via toolkit which are detailed in this document. We are now asking key stakeholders in local authorities to help us identify the key new areas where we can help them to help themselves.
esd-tookit’s unique differentiator lies in its use by the local government community as a dynamic communication tool for exchanging and sharing knowledge and experience among colleagues, rather than the content that is stored within it, which may change as time passes and initiatives come and go.
Within the esd toolkit is the potential for local authorities to capture information once and then use it at many different levels and for many types of reporting. Some authorities have used it to populate their A-Z of services or to link to and drive their CRM or CMS, thus helping them remove the drudgery and duplication of effort associated with keying in the same information many times over and helping achieve continuous improvement in service delivery.
The examples within this document attempt to give the reader a flavour of what the existing user community has derived as clear benefits from using esd toolkit. We have tried to quantify these key benefits in terms of productive time in order to put a financial value on them, although we believe you will think of many more scenarios and examples applicable to your own situation and authority when you read these over. We have used a very conservative £130 per day in our examples as the fully loaded cost to a local authority of officer time.
It is our best estimate that on this basis, a typical local authority making average use of the esd-toolkit could hope to make a saving in productive time alone of £25,000 per annum for each year of use, which is an amazing return on investment given that most local authorities have paid only £480 per annum subscription fee in the last 3 years. This sum does not take into account the additional savings through the substantial discounts that are available to registered members by way of private sector deals that the toolkit has secured from software providers and organisations such as the Butler Group.
No authority will use all the features and functionality available, but if an authority were to
we think it would save £18,000 in that year alone as a direct result of having used the toolkit.
As well as financial benefits, many other benefits of a non-financial nature exist –
and whilst we have mentioned as many as spring to mind, you will no doubt realise there are many more additional benefits as you browse the examples quoted.
We realise that this document is being pitched at a reader base with an incredibly varied understanding of what the esd-toolkit is and what it does and can do. For newcomers, descriptions of the terms used and functionality described can be obtained by clicking on the blue words below. For more detail on how the potential savings have been calculated and to see some real life examples from our existing local authority user community, click on the sums of money on the right hand side of the page, or click the appropriate link to see the full document containing all the examples we have assembled for that category.
Can I again take this opportunity to thank you for your time and interest and to urge you to click on the link and complete our Survey if you have not already done so.
Click here to participate in the survey.
(Click here to see all the examples we have assembled in this section)
Using “My Profile” and the contacts database |
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Use of the forums for “I’m doing this can you help me?” |
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Use of the forums for “I’ve done this would you like it?” |
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Use of the forums for local government collaboration |
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Use of the forums for local and central government collaboration |
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Meeting physically through regional meetings and networking with colleagues and guest speakers |
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Webcasts – live and archive |
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Nomination and use of service experts |
(Click here to see all the examples we have assembled in this section)
Storage and sharing of process maps |
£5,000 for each used |
Use and sharing of the Local Government Services List |
£15,000 per annum |
Storage of National Projects content for easy re-use |
£1,950 on average |
Use of the Projects database |
£2,665 every time used |
Storage & sharing of tender documents |
£1,170 for each used |
Storage & sharing of “other” documents |
£390 for each used |
(Click here to see all the examples we have assembled in this section)
Submission of certain central government returns |
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Rapid exchange of information amongst practitioner channel (for use by central government) |
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Use of core services tree to populate CRM, CMS, A-Z of services, etc |
£35,000 per annum between 6 LAs |
Benchmarking against other local authorities or finding your own beacon council |