Alan Hawes details how Tower Hamlets is embracing the concept of electronic government.

"E-government" and whether "to e or not to e" is an ongoing question that many local authorities have been struggling to answer. But, it seems that this is no longer the case. The question has now become: "When shall we do it, how much will it cost and what will be our level of commitment?"

Across both the private and public sectors there still remains uncertainty and apprehension as to what the future for electronic government entails. The "e-environment" is in continual flux as "dot com" companies rapidly rise and fall, mobile phone technology and public take up continues at an exponential rate and e-mail and internet connection becomes commonplace; forming an essential part of life in the 21st century. Nine out of ten people work in businesses which are connected to the internet and charges for internet access continue to fall to affordable levels. One in five households now own a digital TV, never needing a PC to access the web, while third generation mobile phones will give continuous access to internet and multimedia services.

In essence, we are at the point where the 21st century customer is beginning to expect online access to services and information both during and outside of office hours. In Tower Hamlets, automated responses and call/contact centre initiatives are driving the council's customer services team to rapidly review how services are accessed, delivered and enhanced in line with rising expectations. Will environmental health services be able to rise to the challenge and deliver services which are easily accessible and in the digestible format that will soon be demanded?

PUBLIC SERVICE STRATEGY
As part of the customer services directorate, Tower Hamlets is developing a public service strategy that will open out corporately and guide how every council service is accessed. Within environmental protection, the council is in the capacity building stage in readiness for this change. As this route is being travelled, important lessons are being learned at every stage; particularly as the council realises just how influential developments in personal communication are potentially going to be with regard to the way services and information are managed and delivered. A lesson that has been quickly learned is that by developing services in line with this corporate objective, the council has been able to attract support, prioritise funding and secure non-ringfenced funding.

MANAGING INFORMATION
Within Tower Hamlets, environmental health officers have for many years generated vast amounts of local environmental protection data that is traditionally filed within paper-based systems. More recently, administration files and contents have been electronically indexed on an "Access" database. This exercise was primarily driven by the requirement to respond to in excess of 10,000 land searches per year in a borough undergoing major regeneration. A three-day turnaround is now achieved for searches in all cases and the council has received recognition for money well spent. It is essential that a true picture of the local environment is efficiently delivered for property purchasers and developers, in support of the council's local planning and regeneration priorities.

The council has considered storing paper files electronically in the environmental health department. The planning department uses "Document Imaging", scanning in every planning application for distribution and consultation electronically. This will soon open out into building control, then potentially environmental health. Until then, the environmental health department will retain a paper-based system with a database index. However, the recent introduction of the Access index has greatly improved the quality and management of our previous filing system.

In tune with many authorities, day-to-day service requests are managed using a dedicated database, called "Flare". This is supported by dedicated Access databases, in particular a pest control appointment booking system, developed in-house to compensate for a gap in Flare's capability. These databases make up the backbone of the environmental health department's information management system, with each officer networked with controlled access. Most of the information stored on Flare is likely to remain private and confidential with access restricted to authorised officers as it is sensitive to individual persons and premises. Although this is rather stating the obvious, it is important to identify what information one would like to be publicly accessible along with why, when and in what format.

GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM
Within environmental health, a geographical information system (GIS) has been developed to supply the ever increasing demand for spatially indexed information. The quality of presentation is excellent and helps to inspire confidence from both customers and funders. Built on Arcview software, clear, colourful graphics can be produced, which link to datasets stored on an Access database. Flare is currently developing GIS links, although this is taking some time. Call down screens will then be developed for call centre operatives.

Central to providing a corporate GIS is the development of the council's "Land and property gazetteer". A unique property reference number will be assigned to every property, street and parcel of land in the borough. This allows every department across the council to cross-reference each of its property files to a unique number. This increases the layers of information that can be held and accessed centrally. Much of this information will be personal and confidential, particularly for housing and social services. Data protection and security issues must therefore be resolved, defined and agreed as a priority. As IT systems develop across the council at a rapid rate, a number of lead departments have now formed IT and GIS user groups. This has proved extremely useful, the meetings being used as a sounding board for new ideas, capturing the ideas and results of trials by others and ensuring computability across both the directorates and the council. Communication is the key in such a rapidly changing IT environment.

At present the information held within the environmental protection GIS includes:

• air quality management area (AQMAs);
• part B processes and petrol stations;
• smoke control areas;
• contaminated land strategy and risk model;
• historic industrial land use;
• landfill sites;
• protected open spaces;
• controlled waters; and
• geological information.

An excellent tool has proved to be the purchase of a borough aerial photograph from Cities Revealed. This pictorially links all the information together so that it becomes much easier for the unskilled user to access information and datasets by clicking on a picture of an area. Environmental health has been the first department in the council to go a step further and apply a risk model to the GIS as part of its contaminated land strategy. The aim is to risk assess and prioritise either developed or vacant brownfield sites that pose a potentially significant risk to human health or the environment. As familiarity with the capabilities and benefits of using GIS in environmental health has spread within the department, other teams are volunteering information and requesting assistance in information handling and data management. An important early lesson learned was that data input and updating must be quality controlled. When presented with easy to understand information on a glossy, power-point displayed map it is easy to fall into the trap of taking for granted that the information is correct, current and accurate.

An audit trail of input and amendment must underpin the system. Without this, the massive amount of data which can be held within the GIS can soon become unmanageable and give false impressions. As the system develops it is also tempting to purchase other dedicated databases to manage information sitting within the GIS. This temptation is currently being resisted, due to concern that overlapping data storage could potentially increase the risk of inaccuracy and increased management time. Keeping data management simple and easy to understand is key to a development strategy. The information most recently added to the GIS includes:

- Rat and mice treatments: the location of rat and mice treatments for 1999/2000 and 2000/2001 is proving a useful tool for trend analysis. From this, projections can be made for bait purchase depending in projected population increase or decrease. Similarly, proactive baiting can be targeted to hotspots, optimising use of resources. In a recent operation with the police and the RSPCA to clear a rat infested small holding in Tower Hamlets which was overcrowded with chickens, horses and goats, the spatially held information, including aerial photograph and OS maps, proved invaluable in planning the seizure operation. Maps and photographs blown up to AO size were used to plan access arrangements and deployment of pest control as animals were removed, bulldozers moved in and rats dispatched. The latest trial in pest control involves testing out palm PCs in the field. These are used by the operatives to note down the treatment undertaken at an address for downloading later. Also, as modem links develop, it is envisaged that the operative will have access to our appointment booking system while on site. Through accessing the database via the palm PC we are hoping that any follow up treatment programme could be both assessed and booked with the customer immediately.

- Cooling tower locations: the spatial location of cooling towers across the borough forms the department's public register, with accessible details held on a database. This would prove invaluable in investigating the outbreak of legionnaire's disease. With additional information instantly available, including digital and aerial photographs of the site and surroundings, overlaid on OS maps with human receptors, the value of the service is increased exponentially. The use of these tools to manage infectious disease outbreaks and cluster investigations was recently offered to the Health Authority Primary Care Group in a partnership relationship, adding value to service management.

INTERNET ACCESS
Internet access to services is not far away and is becoming well developed for accessing environmental information. Tower Hamlets is by no means a leader in the field, but within environmental health a close working relationship with corporate IT is being forged to provide accessible, understandable information on our own home page. The department has purchased "Dreamweaver" creative software to develop its system. This will connect to the councils home page by hyperlink. From the home page, hyperlinks will operate between five environmental protection sections including; strategy, residential, pest control, noise and dog fouling. The site is being used to describe and market the department's services and as documents are produced, for example the "Air quality review and assessment", they are being placed on CD-ROM with internet browsing capability. Hyperlinks are used to jump between the index and relevant sections, giving the documents greater interconnectivity.

STAFF INVOLVEMENT AND TRAINING
The introduction of the environmental health management database - Flare - requires that every officer uses the system to update and manage day-to-day work. Training is being rolled-out to every officer with support and guidance. A great deal of work is also being put into capacity building, including hardware purchase and building up service activity codes. Beyond that, there has been a change in the make-up of staff within the department. Much more use has been made of technical administration staff as IT projects have received new funding from a variety of sources. The contaminated land and air quality strategies have led the way in developing GIS and internet capability and are supported by temporary technical administration staff. The integration of these staff into a professional team has captured the imagination of existing staff who are developing their own innovative ideas for service enhancement using IT. The software produced for data management and presentation has developed so far now that operators find it extremely easy to use. However, it is extremely important to make sure that expert advice is sought in choosing appropriate software or systems from the outset as a wrong choice can result in non-use of the product, effectively wasting resources.

BEST VALUE
Many other authorities are making great strides in improving access, service delivery and management using the vast range of tools that are becoming more readily available all the time. Electronic access to local authorities, including environmental health, will continue to grow exponentially over the next few years. The growth in mobile personal communication will be an ever-increasing factor as a media for customer interaction. Making preparations now for enhancing service delivery and managing information, can only help in meeting the demand to provide services which are best value.

Finally, now is the time to focus on this growth area and its impact on environmental health. In the same way that professional services are benchmarked and co-ordinated across London and the Counties in study groups, we should consider how local authorities are planning to interact with the customer, deliver future services and benefit from working together.
Alan Hawes, team leader, Environmental Health Council Offices, Southern Grove, London E3 4PN, UK.
Tel: 020 7364 6776. E-mail: alanh8@yahoo.com