Team coming up with solutions

A new report has highlighted the invaluable work done by North Lanarkshire Council’s Business Solutions team in helping respond to the coronavirus pandemic.

The group is responsible for providing digital services and transformation across all departments of the local authority.

Its head officer, Katrina Hassell, presented the report highlighting the team’s efforts at a virtual meeting of the transformation and digitisation committee.

Working from home has, of course, grown massively, from a daily average of 100 employees to 1900 in addition to online meetings and other work during the Covid-19 lockdown.

Business Solutions was able to facilitate this expansion in roughly one week and has also secured funding to provide 2000 electronic devices, primarily laptops, to employees in the region.

North Lanarkshire was the first Scottish council to introduce telephone support for people told to shield themselves.

A national helpline was announced by the Scottish Government in early April which puts the caller straight through to the local authority where they live.

Intelligent automated systems were used to ensure all qualifying for free school meals received their payments on time.

With schools closed, Business Solutions staff also helped implement online classrooms to support pupils and staff.

Commenting on the report, committee convener Councillor Kenneth Duffy said: “There is absolutely no doubt a huge amount of work has been done in unprecedented times, especially getting everybody to work from home when it was forced upon us during the coronavirus pandemic.”