Greenwich goes Live and Caseworks hits 2,000,000 case pages
After a lengthy period of customisation, the latest Caseworks customer - London Borough of Greenwich - has gone live. Feedback from the Greenwich Project Manager immediately after go live was that "initial feedback has been very positive".Two months later at the first post live Review Meeting, users seemed to be quite ecstatic. A user who had previously shunned all technology, is reported as having said that it was making his job much easier. Sally Midlane, Unit Manager, said she was really thrilled with the supervision facility and had called all the staff round her PC to view the summary data. She also reported meeting the new Director of Housing, who had come from Leeds City Council who confirmed that in his experience at Leeds that Caseworks is a "brilliant product"
A long list of enhancements which will be of benefit to other customers has been installed. These include full provision for RIPA, Surveillance, Restorative Justice and Formal Complaints. In addition, Greenwich has made full use of lesser used functionality such as grouping cases together into Projects and organising referrals to Panel Meetings.
Already Greenwich users have added much detail to the skeletal cases which were data loaded, and this has just taken the total of all case pages in all caseworks sites across the country to over two million. Data has never been added faster than it is now, with one Case Page being added somewhere in the country during working hours every 15 seconds.
Does any other supplier publish comparable data?
HUBSolutions goes with Android
Peter Hall, Managing Director of HUBSolutions, stated that the transition would be an opportunity to launch new, exciting mobile applications catering for a wider range of needs and would extend the company's products to Tablets as well as Smartphones. The first applications are expected to be available by the end of this year.
Speed trebled for hosted Caseworks sites
Conversion was done smoothly and without any service down time over a weekend. The new server is more than twice as fast, the new bandwidth is an order of magnitude greater than before and several aspects of security are also greatly improved.
The need for this has been caused by several customers increasing the number of users - in two cases by 100% - and several customers also requesting new facilities - mapping etc - which will make greater demands of the system.
The upgrade has been achieved in partnership with Netbenefit (UK) Ltd (www.netbenefit.com), a local London company, with many public sector clients, and who have bent over backwards to assist HUBSolutions staff in the conversion process.
Two new customers


Two new customers signed up for the Caseworks ASB Module this October.
Contour Housing Group is already halfway through the customisation process and the London Borough of Greenwich has broken through a mountain of bureaucracy to get a signed contract.
Both customers look set to make significant additions to the Caseworks specification, and also have some new parallel requirements - Colour Coding of cases - now part of the core system.
A new Tenancy Support User Group

Portsmouth Goes Live with the Domestic Abuse Module
Portsmouth City Council Early Intervention Department has gone live with the new Caseworks Module for tackling Domestic Abuse.The new module allows cases to be set up with ease, using a customised wizard, then added to as work on the case progresses. A key element is the Risk Assessment page, comprising 24 risk elements and various supplementary questions, from which a score is automatically calculated and tracked throughout the history of the case. Cases are automatically coloured based upon the score providing visually appealing prioritisation of cases.
The module also allows the user to do MARAC referrals, referrals to Social Services, Community Alarms etc - all of which pull existing data from the Case and allow the user to create a printed output form at the click of a button.
Initial reaction from users has been very positive. The team has several times expressed a view that other DV Units would be interested in this programme, and they are looking forward to being the Reference Site and showing it off.
Gloucester City Homes buys Caseworks ASB Module

Launch of the Estate Management Module
The Module is part of its Anti-Social Behavour Caseworks System, but is entirely separate from the ASB Module, with its own User Community, its own screens and functionality. The Module has evolved from the highly successful "Notify & Respond Module" piloted by South Lanarkshire and Glasgow Councils, where it is used to record Environmental problems and links with the Award Winning Mobile Working solution.
The Estate Management Module includes Estate Inspections, Estate Scoring, Tenancy Procedures, Tenancy Checks and Tenancy Audit and now, Fire Safety Checks. The Module has been developed in conjunction with housing customers, Hyndburn Homes, Leeds ALMOs and East Durham Homes all of whom have it operational. Hyndburn, who started the development now have a year's worth of data and are seeing real benefits. East Durham have been using it successfully to schedule all their Tenancy Audit visits since April 2009. Leeds completed a massive roll-out to hundreds of users in the three ALMOs over the summer period.
The first Estate Management User Group is to be hosted in Hyndburn in mid November, to look at possible future enhancements.
The Module is being launched at the HITEX Exhibition as Aston Villa on 20th October and at the National Federation of Housing Associations Conference on 17th and 18th November. For information, email sales@hubsolutions.co.uk
South Lanarkshire and Instant Capture win one of the "Good Communications Awards"
South Lanarkshire Council won the "Mobile Technology Award" at "The Good Communications Awards 2009" held at an award dinner hosted by Hugh Dennis at the Emirates Stadium on 8th July 2009. Their submission was the ASB Instant Capture system developed by HUBSolutions.
The award was received by Annette Finnen, Alison Moore and Mark Williams from South Lanarkshire Council.The Judging Panel who included Dan Cobley, Marketing Director, UK, Ireland and Benelux, Google and Phillip Webb, Chair, Government Relations Group, British Computer Society made the following comments about the submission:- "... This is real evidence of how local authorities are embracing mobile technology and putting it to great use on the streets".
The award is presented to the local authority or central government department that has implemented a mobile strategy that can demonstrate either: benefits to citizens through increased access to services, or; benefits to the organisation through increased efficiencies.
For more details, visit
http://www.communicator.gcawards.co.uk/telecoms-awards/12-awards/70-mobile-technology-award
For more photos, visit http://www.hubsolutions.co.uk/asb/blogs/caseworksblog.php
and http://www.communicator.gcawards.co.uk/image-gallery
HUBSolutions "ASB Instant Capture" gets its certificate
