News

March 2006

Burall InfoCare customer, Nottinghamshire County Council have won the coveted e-Government Award at the National Awards for Local Government, for their implementation of the InfoCare system.

The LGC Awards ceremony took place at the prestigious Grosvenor House Hotel on London's Park Lane on 13 March 2006. Hosted by comedian Jimmy Carr, the Awards ceremony was a celebration of the very best achievements in local government and attracted over 1200 attendees.

The e-Government category goes to the Council who can best demonstrate the effective use of Information Technology to transform the delivery of public services, so was recognition of the impact that the novel InfoCare system has on the delivery of homecare services by Nottinghamshire County Council Social Services department.

Paul McKay, Assistant Director of Social Services, who was at the ceremony to receive the award along side Sylvia Rowley, Project Manager, and Pauline McCoy, Head of Direct Service, said "We are absolutely delighted to receive this award in recognition of the whole team who have worked hard, with imagination and good humour to introduce radical improvements to our service." He added "The support of Burall through this process has been invaluable and I want to thank them for all their efforts and assistance."

Lawrence Faulkner, Director and InfoCare system designer, said "We felt passionately about the use of appropriate technologies to accurately measure the quality of delivered homecare, so that precious resources can be focused where they are most needed and the Service Users sit at the heart, not the end, of the process.  This award recognises the impact our system has had on actual service delivery and the very positive feedback from all the stakeholders in homecare.

"To encourage innovation in the homecare sector, which, of the all the sectors of local government, has probably least-utilised technology advances, Burall InfoCare are sponsoring the IT Innovator category at the National Homecare Awards in May."

The final word went to Peter DeVito, Technical Director and co-designer of the InfoCare system. Wearing one of his trademark waistcoats, he said "The old-fashioned telephone-based technologies used by some Councils are wholly inadequate to cope with the new drivers within a modern flexible service so our system has been designed from the bottom-up to include all stakeholders. Notts have been rightly demanding of Service-centric features and I'm proud to see that others recognise we have risen to the challenge!"