sponsored by MLL Telecom
Presented to the Local Authority or Central Government Department that can demonstrate an effective use of a new or emerging communication technology (eg VoiceoverIP, RFID, SMS).

2011 Winner: Kent County Council - Audio Conferencing
Innovation and digital technology plays a key role in the way the Kent County Council delivers services and in supporting its people to work more flexibly. In order to reduce travel-related costs and lower its carbon emission, it has recently implemented BT MeetMe, a hosted audio conferencing service that only requires a fixed or mobile phone for access, enabling virtual meetings with up to 40 participants. No prior booking is required and conferences can be established in the time it takes to dial the local access number. Each account has two PIN numbers, one for the organiser of the call and the other for the participants. To use the service delegates simply pick up the phone, dial the access number, enter their PIN, and announce their name. Once the organiser dials in all the parties are connected together in a virtual meeting. The system is allowing regular and ad hoc meetings to be quickly and easily scheduled, enabling group conversations to take place without travelling.

Commended: City of Edinburgh Council - Building Services Mobile working
The City of Edinburgh Council’s Building Services operation recently undertook a project aimed to optimise the performance of mobile workers by linking its Opti-Time dynamic work scheduling system with the iClient application from Kirona. Custom software was developed to integrate iClient with not only the Opti-Time but also two back-office systems covering works order management and contractor management. This enabled dynamic job allocation to mobile workers in real time – based on skill set, location, and current job status. Each mobile worker has a PDA with a touch screen to receive job instructions. A BT leased line connects the BT hosted server running the iClient application with the Vodafone 3G/GPRS mobile network. The council’s eGovernment Division is already commencing work with other service areas such as Community Safety, Health & Social Care, and Revenues and Benefits, to further exploit the benefits of the mobile platform.

Commended: DirectGov - Travel News app
Directgov, Transport Direct and applications developer Cimex worked together to develop the Travel News application. Both iPhone and Android versions of the app were developed using the same core code base and were launched within days of one another, just in time to help people cope with the first winter snowfalls in December 2009. Working within the capabilities of the Transport Direct API, the Cimex mobile development team built an app that allows users to filter travel information by region, transport type and delay type. The app also uses a Google Maps interface to plot each delay or disruption type. Users can then select each delay for more detailed information. The iPhone version of the app achieved over 120,000 downloads in its first four weeks of availability. Future releases will allow users to search for delays within a set distance or radius of their current location.