Wigan Borough Council consolidates policy management across entire local authority

Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council (Wigan Council) has announced it is to manage all of its workplace policies and internal communications activity with the NETconsent Enterprise Policy Management suite. The decision follows a successful project to automate the distribution and staff approval processes for its Acceptable Internet Usage policy using the WEBconsent module within the NETconsent suite.

Wigan Council purchased WEBconsent in July 2003. Having realised substantial increases in efficiency, the Council has expanded its use of NETconsent Enterprise Policy Management Suite to distribute all the Councilís policies, thereby delivering improved corporate governance processes.

Aside from employees viewing inappropriate content, time spent viewing non-work related sites affects productivity and can slow networks. Organisations in the public and private sector are also faced with managing increasingly stringent corporate governance mandates and industry specific regulations. According to the CIPD, employees are more likely to exercise discretion when they feel they are being treated fairly and consistent communication of policies is key to helping employees understand their rights and responsibilities.

The initial project using the WEBconsent module has enabled Wigan Council to significantly reduce the time and money required to distribute its Internet AUP to more than 4000 employees, at its distributed offices and partner organisations across the Borough. It also manages access to the Internet until a user accepts the policy with a digital signature. Expanding the system to distribute all policies will result in further cost savings and satisfy audit requirements. NETconsent provides the Council with a real-time, secure audit trail that supports any disciplinary action should it become necessary.

Peter Livesey, assistant director of Finance and IT, explains, ìAll Local Authorities are under pressure to improve their corporate governance processes. The Audit Commission recommended that senior management should take steps to make staff aware of their responsibilities and create an environment in which ICT is recognised as essential to service delivery ñ the decision to expand the use of NETconsent is central to helping Wigan tackle this head-on.î

He goes on to say, ìThe NETconsent suite has everything that we need to create a single, consistent, authority-wide process for managing our policies. This will not only mean that money can be saved against manually distributing and approving our policies, but will also enable more to be spent on service delivery for our residents. Moreover, the new features in NETconsent will further help us to ensure policy effectiveness. The new Reporter and Examiner modules will allow us to closely monitor how well staff understand policies, thereby identifying potential weaknesses in knowledge or skills which may require management attention.î