Dumfries and Galloway Council has been shortlisted for the Digital Public Services Award from the prestigious Holyrood Magazine Scottish Public Services Award 2015, which are supported by the Scottish Government and Scottish Parliament. They recognise the rich and unique diversity of public life in Scotland and the vital relationships which cut across departmental, geographic and institutional boundaries.
These awards offer the opportunity to celebrate outstanding achievements and give recognition to the work which often goes on behind the scenes to support the governance of Scotland. The award recognises the use of technology to deliver improvements in services to the public. This may include the effective use of technology: to improve service provision; to make public services more accessible; or to increase the operational efficiency or effectiveness of a public body.
Dumfries and Galloway Council has been shortlisted for this award for the development of its Persons at Risk Database (PARD), a ground-breaking project which, during emergencies, enables responders identify the location of vulnerable people through data provided by Social Work Services and the NHS.
Previous major events in Dumfries and Galloway highlighted that emergency responders weren’t able to quickly identify vulnerable people who might need assistance, particularly out with normal office hours.
This project involved partnership working with Dumfries and Galloway Emergency Planning Team, Dumfries and Galloway NHS and Police Scotland to deliver a system which would allow the most vulnerable people in Dumfries and Galloway to be easily identified geographically in the event of an emergency. PARD uses geographic information system (GIS) mapping and national address gazetteers to select and display database information.
The need to incorporate information from Social Work Services and NHS Dumfries and Galloway was recognised at an early stage of development and having a combined portal adds significant value. As a result, this innovative system is the first in the country to achieve this level of data inclusion. Obviously, this level of data sharing presented a number of challenges, particularly an assurance to the NHS on how sensitive data would be managed and used. The system doesn’t hold live data and is designed so that source data can only be accessed on demand and only from within identified PARD search criteria.
PARD, which has also previously won a national ‘Emergency Planning Initiative of the Year Award’ from The Emergency Planning Society, is an effective, simple and intuitive system, which saves valuable time and enables responders to target assistance and scarce resources to those most in need of them.
The Scottish Government Resilience Division has recognised the system as being best practice and is currently looking at options to develop it at national level.
Council Leader Ronnie Nicholson said, “PARD is a ground-breaking project, which enables responders to identify tahe location of vulnerable people quickly and efficiently. Protecting our most vulnerable people is a Council priority and I’m delighted that, once again, we have been recognised for this excellent project which does just that. This excellent system pinpoints the location of vulnerable people during emergencies, saving valuable time in identifying priorities and deploying resources to where they are needed most and I would once again like to congratulate and thank everyone who was involved in developing this outstanding idea.”
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