A council growing but small size able to be more efficient and reduce processing times thanks to the progressive implementation of eGovernment, starting with the most priority procedures, adapting to the way of working of its employees and ensuring the economic viability of draft.
THE PROBLEM TO SOLVE
Nigrán is a small municipality of 19,000 inhabitants, due to its coastal location triples its population during the summer months. This privileged location in full Rias Baixas and its proximity to a large city such as Vigo, had caused in recent years a strong growth in both population and in the number of records to process in the City Council.
Despite its growth, the City Council of Nigrán was still a relatively small size, limited both personnel and physical space.
The 50 public employees, among which there was no specialized personnel in computer science, began to have trouble answering the increase of cases to handle, which eventually generate increased response times. To this lack of consolidated information on the procedures that were carried out, and the existence of systems of scattered united and independent information.
All this made the government team to tackle a project would raise administrative modernization that would allow them to meet their growing needs, but with a solution that suited their small size and at the same time could evolve as they did their needs.
THE ADOPTED SOLUTION
The City Council of Nigrán decided to have the help of Imatia in 2008 and carry out a process of continuous improvement, with a focus on improving handling processes and not to act as an instrument of control solution.
For the council it was essential the modular nature of the application developed by Imatia, allowing them to adopt a solution capable of evolving and aimed at achieving user acceptance. It was decided to start implementing procedures progressively up to a total of 200, to encompass all areas of council management: planning, procurement, collection, personal, police, environment, etc.
Moreover, dynamic service for public employees hired for a period of two years, in which an expert on software and eGovernment would provide professional technical support and “in situ”.
RESULT
The result was a success of the government team of Nigrán and public employees of this council, who use currently this solution to process administrative records from all areas of the City Council. The staff quickly saw the benefits of this solution gave them when their work easier and more efficient, which resulted in a close cooperation of all the council to succeed finally reached.
More than 12,000 records have been managed with Imatia’s software since 2008, spread among 15 different areas of the municipality. The success of the solution has settled in experienced increased efficiency as well as its ease of change management and implementation of iterative processes to adapt to the way users work, with the acceptance of the latter the key essential for achieving the objectives.
ABOUT NIGRÁN:
Nigrán is part of the “Mancomunidad of Vigo”, an association of municipalities bordering this town in southern Galicia, which between 2007 and 2008 decided to implement the eGovernment with Imatia. We selected this success story to illustrate this successful project, which was carried out similarly in the other eight municipalities belonging to the aforementioned “Mancomunidad”.
