Consolidating fragmented systems, cutting costs and dramatically improving citizen experience and day-to-day operations
The challenge
Newcastle City Council was caught between citizens wanting better digital services and tighter budgets. Over many years, as the council had digitised and improved various services, different departments had introduced new tools and software applications. However, at the council level, this was creating unintended consequences, increased costs and multiple siloed systems – leaving the council managing over 100 different business applications.
This is a common issue affecting many organisations: Legacy systems are difficult to change and challenging to integrate and SaaS applications are introduced to fill gaps in functionality. As the needs of the service users and staff evolve, further tools are developed or introduced and the number of applications in play sprawls.
Every application has a licence cost, a support cost, training costs and – if integrated with other tools – a cost to make changes. Plus, it’s harder to maintain lots of disparate applications, and this tends to make things less secure.
Newcastle recognised this problem of escalating costs and fragmentation of systems and applications was holding them back in making change. Integration challenges were slowing down digital service delivery and causing inconsistent experiences for citizens. With data stuck in silos, it was impossible to get a complete picture of citizen interactions.
Newcastle wanted a coordinated approach, allowing them to deliver truly joined-up public services, so they chose Liberty Create with Citizen Hub, giving them a full-stack, low-code case management, workflow and process automation solution specifically designed for councils. They wanted to get a single view of citizens, cases and users across all council services, and the ability to rapidly develop new applications themselves, using low-code and RPA (robotic process automation).
“The real power is having low-code development and RPA working together seamlessly within the Liberty platform. The RPA doesn’t run in isolation: It feeds data back into Citizen Hub’s case management system, maintains audit trails and integrates with our workflows. When everything’s built on one platform, the automation becomes part of the service delivery ecosystem, not a bolt-on solution.”
Paul Doney
Service Manager – Digital Solutions, Newcastle City Council
The solution
“It was a lightbulb moment seeing housing rent verification go from 840 hours to 21 hours in just 12 weeks. Staff saw immediately that this wasn’t about replacing them – it was freeing them to do the work that really matters. Now departments come to us asking ‘What can we automate next?’.”
Paul Doney
Service Manager – Digital Solutions, Newcastle City Council
The result
Newcastle’s implementation of Citizen Hub demonstrates how smart platform selection and collaborative implementation can revolutionise operations to deliver real change and savings in public service delivery. Focused on integration, efficiency and citizen outcomes, Newcastle redefined customer experience while serving as a model for local government digital transformation.
Utilising an integrated rapid application development solution, the result is a more efficient, responsive and citizen-focused council that has accelerated transformation across the organisation. Newcastle continues to strive for innovation and improvement, keeping citizen outcomes and value for money front and centre.
The team at Newcastle plans continued automation of routine processes, enhanced citizen self-service options and integration with emerging technologies like AI. Machine learning promises to unlock new possibilities for intelligent service delivery.
Impact
£1m Saved
in licence fees over 5 years
100+ Apps Replaced
rationalisation and consolidation of legacy solutions to create better digital services
98% Time Saving
each year in manual housing verification
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