[square brackets and BOLD are our comments]

Transforming the council

Relocation is a central part of our plans to transform this Council into an organisation that meets the needs of its residents and businesses in an accessible, cost effective and joined up way [oh, no, the dreaded jargon joined up!]. So that we can keep abreast of customer demand and rising customer expectations, East Devon is working hard to transform and modernise the way staff go about their work and the ways in which customers can do business with the council.  Key to these new ways of working are a number of projects which include the following:

Mobile device policy rollout – this will ensure that officers will have the right IT equipment to allow them to work from home, flexibly (between home and office) or in a mobile way.  [Er, does this mean an iPad for every worker perhaps and no-one ever needing to actually work at Skypark?]

Creating a fully ICT equipped mobile workforce will help us improve efficiency and customer service.

Open for business – web channel – this project will see us totally revamp our website using the principles already established by the successful gov.uk website. As well as fresh content which is easier to find, this project will deliver 230 additional on-line services for our customers [230 more online services – can you imagine it – well, if you don’t have a computer you can’t]. We know from the feedback in from our Viewpoint Survey that 72% of our customers are satisfied with our services [anyone see the survey?  It would be ripped to shreds by any professional survey organisation!] but we want to improve this figure by offering our services where and when our customers want them [er, I think you will find they want them in Sidmouth, or possibly Honiton but certainly not Skypark!].

In addition to this East Devon is currently reviewing facilities across the district to understand what existing space we can use for mobile officers to ‘touch down’ across the district so that they will not need to make unnecessary journeys back to the office [a new phrase!  we are not having “hubs” any more – they are “touch downs”!]. We are also drawing up proposals to firm up what service provision will be available for customers across the district following relocation [translation: we have no idea what we are going to do].

 Public and stakeholder engagement and consultation

[Isn’t this interesting:  the headline shows that EDDC doesn’t consider the public to be stakeholders!]

We will be carrying out consultation with our equality partners and from a Best Value perspective to help us understand what service provision customers, key stakeholders and partners would like to see around the district following relocation. [Anyone like to try to translate what seems to be like meaningless jargon again?]

Communication

We continue to update staff on progress and following this report further staff sessions will be arranged.  Additionally, we continue to communicate externally and our communications strategy is constantly under review. The stakeholder meetings, East Devon Extras and engagement with all media channels regarding office accommodation have been helpful in getting our messages out there. These will continue. [groan, groan: sounds like the staff are going to be brainwashed and the media is going to continue to be blasted with pro-move propaganda]