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cambridgeshire_casestudy
1. BlackBerry Case Study
Cambridgeshire County Council
Public Sector
“We’re very careful with personal data, and the BlackBerry solution kept
the data safely behind our corporate firewall even when being accessed
by users in the field.”
Alan Shields, ICT Development Manager, Cambridgeshire County Council
2. The Challenge
Cambridgeshire County Council (CCC) is the lead for Project Nomad,
a local e-government national project, dedicated to mobile working
and piloting mobile technology solutions that can help local authorities
improve service to its citizens.
Cambridgeshire County Council’s Social Services department is
responsible for providing a wide range of social care to the County’s
citizens. The department had identified that information held in its
social care system (SWIFT by Anite) could help the Ambulance Trust
provide a better level of service, particularly if the information could
be made accessible to ambulance crews via mobile communications
devices.
Traditionally, in the unfortunate event of a household accident
involving an elderly person living alone, the ambulance crew would
take the affected party to Accident & Emergency (A&E), as a precaution.
This was the only way to ensure that someone would look out for the
patient during the observation period following the accident.
However, SWIFT contains very useful information on all the County’s
social care clients. In the case of elderly people, the records include
information about their care worker and relatives, as well as any speech,
hearing and visual impairments. If ambulance crews could access this
information “on the move” they could make alternative arrangements,
such as contacting a care worker or relative, thereby sparing the client
an unnecessary trip to A&E.
The Solution
Steered by the objectives of Project Nomad, the Council decided to run
a “proof of concept” pilot using BlackBerry® handhelds and involving
the Social Services department and the East Anglia Ambulance Trust.
“We decided to provide the ambulance crews with browser-based mobile
access to SWIFT using BlackBerry handhelds,” explains Alan Shields,
Information and Communication Technology Development Manager
at CCC. “We selected AppSwing to develop the back-office application
that would push out the SWIFT data to the BlackBerry handhelds.”
When it came to selecting the appropriate mobile devices, the key
considerations were security, usability and reliability. “Crews don’t
want to mess around with equipment that is difficult to use or
unreliable. Plus the solution had to conform with our security protocols,”
comments Shields. “BlackBerry was an obvious choice as it ticked all
of these boxes.”
The entire solution was developed around BlackBerry and deployed
in weeks rather than months. Each of the ten ambulance crews was issued
with a BlackBerry 7730™ handheld. “Since this was a time-limited trial,
we made a conscious decision to deploy a look-up only system, though
BlackBerry technology would have let us deploy a data-entry solution
if that had been what we wanted,” added Shields
The AppSwing software and underlying Internet Information Service
(IIS) were connected to the SWIFT database. The web pages created
by AppSwing were delivered securely through the BlackBerry Enterprise
Server™ to the BlackBerry handhelds.
Care giver: BlackBerry helps local
government improve social services
CASE STUDY CAMBRIDGESHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL
Successfully reduces medical emergency admissions and improves level of client care
3. CASE STUDY CAMBRIDGESHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL
Trial yields convincing results
As a “proof of concept” the trial was fully conclusive. Unnecessary trips
to A&E are a waste of time for ambulance crews, costly for the National
Health Service and distressing for the patient. By empowering the
ambulance crews with BlackBerry so that alternative arrangements could
be made, Cambridgeshire County Council’s Social Service contributed to
a reduced number of hospital admissions and a marked improvement in
the overall quality of care provided to its social services clients.
Clearly the ergonomics of the BlackBerry handhelds were considered by
Cambridgeshire County Council to have made a crucial contribution to
the success of the trial. The ambulance crews were seen to have rapidly
adopted them, with little training or support. “The crews found BlackBerry
really easy to use,” says Shields. “They just turned it on and it worked
without any problems. The battery was capable of lasting for days
between charges, making it ideal for their long shifts.”
The whole solution also provided cost-effective data access. By using the
AppSwing software and the integrated BlackBerry browser, the Council
didn’t need to rewrite any product code, purchase any additional user
licenses for its back-office system or install any remote client software.
Crucially, BlackBerry met Cambridgeshire County Council’s strict security
and data protection requirements. With BlackBerry there is a direct
TCP-IP level connection to the wireless network as well as Triple-DES
encryption protected data travelling between the BlackBerry Enterprise
Server and the BlackBerry device.
“We’re very careful with personal data, and the BlackBerry solution kept
the data safely behind our corporate firewall even when being accessed
by users in the field. Moreover, the BlackBerry handhelds were password
protected, as was the application. In the case of a BlackBerry handheld
going missing, we could disable it centrally by issuing a kill command
over the air,” explains Shields.
“I suppose you could say that our introduction
of BlackBerry devices was somewhat
unconventional. Most organisations start with
email and calendaring before going to data
services; we did it the other way around.”
Alan Shields, ICT Development Manager,
Cambridgeshire County Council
Future plans
The trial also demonstrated to Cambridgeshire County Council
how useful BlackBerry could be as a business tool. “I suppose you
could say that our introduction of BlackBerry devices was somewhat
unconventional. Most organisations start with email and calendaring
before going to data services; we did it the other way around,”
remarks Shields. Since the trial ended a total of 65 BlackBerry devices
have been deployed for email and calendaring to a wider range
of highly mobile Council users, ranging from senior managers to
field staff.
The next wave of deployment is scheduled to be complete by
April 2006. “We have definite plans to use BlackBerry as a data
platform in the future. The trial showed we could provide an interface
for a BlackBerry device to access data on the move from any of our
business processes,” concludes Shields.
