Cloud computing case study: Lewisham Borough Council

Cloud computing underpins award-winning Lewisham Borough Council environmental service

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Cloud computing technology has played a key role in the development of an award-winning online environmental service deployed by the London Borough of Lewisham.

Launched publicly in 2005, the web-based service LoveLewisham.org was conceived as a way to give citizens, elected councillors and council environmental workers the power to improve their immediate environment. The service features an interactive map using the latest Microsoft Silverlight browser plug-in and Bing Maps for Enterprise to identify and submit reports of environmental incidents such as fly tipping, fly posting or graffiti in real time. Leveraging the service cleanup efforts can be undertaken with optimum efficiency.

The LoveLewisham project had its origins in a web-based reporting application developed by Nigel Tyrell, head of environmental services at Lewisham London Borough Council, in 1999. This allowed environmental incident location information to be posted via the web into a Microsoft Access database using ASP (Active Server Pages).

By 2004, the benefits of this web site were clearly apparent, but Tyrell decided that its functionality would be greatly improved if users of the site were able to post images of environmental issues directly to the web site.

"It started one day when I was on the way home and saw some fly-tipped rubbish. I got out my Pocket PC and took a photo, which got me wondering if it would be possible to post the image directly into the database," Tyrell explained.

Microsoft Certified Partner bbits enhances service

"To assess the technical feasibility of these enhancements we contacted Microsoft Certified Partner bbits. In 2004 the service was refined and improved by bbits with greatly enhanced functionality, including the ability to post images of incidents. In addition to improving the efficiency of our environmental services teams, it means citizens can monitor how their local council is acting on the reports of areas that are blighted by graffiti or the illegal dumping of waste."

The technology developed by bbits to underpin the service includes the Microsoft .NET Framework for the development work and Windows Server 2008 for the operating system, as well as Component Object Model. It has also deployed Microsoft Content Management Server 2007, Microsoft HPC Pack 2008, and Excel Services in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

After an internal pilot that saw Lewisham's elected members and workers test the service, it was decided that the reporting initiative was ready to go live in 2005.

Cloud computing case study: Lewisham Borough Council

Cloud computing underpins award-winning Lewisham Borough Council environmental service

LoveLewisham: an award-winning project

And since this date the LoveLewisham project has been shortlisted for numerous awards, winning the New Statesman New Media Award in 2006 and the Government Business Award in 2010.

The aim of the LoveLewisham initiative has been met and the service has dealt with over 150,000 Lewisham reports since its implementation in 2004. The savings and performance improvements from the project have been wide ranging and compelling. There has been an 87 per cent reduction in the time taken to process an issue reported on LoveLewisham, and a 70 per cent reduction in individual environmental report handling costs.

Since introducing its online environmental crime reporting tool, complaints about graffiti have dropped by 30 per cent in Lewisham, according to the Audit Commission, which compared 2007 and 2009 data. In addition the cost benefits are apparent: an average telephone request costs £5.10, a Web Form request for the same costs £4.10. A report to LoveCleanStreets (with a photo) costs only £1.50 to process.

LoveLewisham has also eliminated overtime wages that were previously paid to staff to collect missed bins from £300,000 in 2006 to £0 today. This has been achieved by allowing refuse collection crews to post images of blocked access problems and revisiting sites within shift to collect missed bins.

Lewisham estimates that it has improved fly-tip removal times from over two days in 2004 to less than one day currently. An additional benefit comes from the fact that trade waste income has been boosted by £20,000 by getting trade waste crews to report over-production of trade waste via LoveLewisham.

Taking the service beyond the London Borough of Lewisham

Following on from the success of this service in Lewisham bbits developed LoveCleanStreets (a generic, national version of LoveLewisham), which was launched in February 2010. It is supported by Keep Britain Tidy, Capital Ambition, Veolia Environmental Services, O2, and Microsoft UK.

After public consultation, the service has been included within the London Mayors' Waste Strategy and was launched as LoveCleanLondon across all of the capital's 33 local authorities in the first quarter of 2010. LoveCleanLondon will be promoted by the London Mayor to engage Londoners in preparation for the 2012 Olympics.

For the new London-wide application, bbits used Bing Maps for Enterprise to produce an interactive map, with the latest Microsoft Silverlight technology to show reports as they appear in real time. Visitors can see and search for all the reports in their area, share them on Twitter or a permalink, review progress, or subscribe to updates through Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. Custom apps have also been created for users of popular mobile devices including Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Android and iPhone.

Ian Blackburn, director at bbits, said: "This hosted service can be fully integrated into local authority citizen relationship management technology, thereby ensuring that issues are dealt with smoothly and in a joined up way. A free application programming interface helps developers create their own tools to submit and retrieve reports."

Cloud computing case study: Lewisham Borough Council

Cloud computing underpins award-winning Lewisham Borough Council environmental service

Moving LoveCleanStreets into the Microsoft Azure cloud

Blackburn went on to explain that LoveCleanStreets was enhanced further when it was migrated from bbits' servers into the hosted Microsoft Windows Azure cloud computing platform in November 2010, so allowing developers to create cloud applications and enhanced services around the core initiative.

The multiple advantages of transferring the services into the cloud were detailed by Lewisham's Tyrell: "The system needs elasticity to absorb peaks in demand without crashing and the Azure cloud delivers this. It also gives the ability to customise the service while keeping both capital and running costs down for other local authorities – which is particularly important in this tough economic climate. In terms of reliability and speed, the system in the cloud has been very robust. Also it seems to be a lot faster now it is running in Azure."