Health and Safety Inspection Management Tips For 2022

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If we look at the official data for non-fatal accidents at work in the EU, the statistic will show us graphs that either go up or down. Going up means more accidents at work while going down means the opposite. More accidents mean more expenses. So the reasonable question here for regulators and private enterprises subject to regulations is: how to control the rate of work accidents and keep it down? The indirect answer is: by optimising the safety inspection program of the organisation. You’ll find the more direct answer, one that tells exactly how to do that, below.

The primary purpose of optimising the safety inspection programs is to ensure:

  1. Worker’s safety

Keeping the workforce safe ensures the long-term stability of the company’s worker retention program

2. Good reputation

An organisation with a low rate of work accidents has a good reputation. It’s an advantage and should be recognised as such.

3. No disruption of operations

The safety of the work environment improves productivity and reduces the disruption of operations. Avoiding disruptions helps the company keep their work on a budget.

4. No fines by regulators

Regulations are being updated regularly. That’s why it’s essential to use an inspection solution that ensures that rules are being followed in an up to date manner because fines may seriously sidetrack the company’s plan.

Resource optimization and business scheduling software

CASE STUDY: How a regulatory agency cut costs with resource scheduling software?
          • reducing the scheduling time with up to 75%
          • increasing efficiency of operations with 40%
          • fully eliminating errors in the resource allocation process.
Download the case study.

A good safety inspection program may be divided into three components:

Inspection planning & scheduling

  • The inspection planning and scheduling component need constant optimising because a good plan can improve resource utilisation and prevent mistakes.

Inspection execution

  • The inspection execution component is the part that can significantly improve the speed and quality of inspections. The use of technology can transform the work of inspectors by allowing them to use pre-defined inspection checklists or benefit from an entirely digital document management system. The digital infrastructure of the inspection management process can remove the manual work that often slows down inspectors.

Training

  • The digital infrastructure allows inspectors to gain better visibility on inspection outcomes and therefore recommend relevant actions and training to the workers to reduce the risk of accidents in the workplace.

modular digital transformationWhy is modularity crucial for your digital transformation strategy in 2022?

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        • The advantages of modular digital transformation
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        • How Jobtimizer can help public sector organisations make the transition
        • How a regulatory agency in the UK is benefitting from a modular approach

 

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The importance of digitising the safety inspection checklists

What’s the best way for an inspector to identify risks during safety inspection? Answer: by following a checklist. When everything’s written down on a list, the inspector has a better chance to cover all of the potential risks. The process can be improved even more with a digital inspection management system. When regulatory bodies adopt software solutions for safety inspections, the pre-defined checklists can be easily implemented into the work process of inspectors. For different types of safety inspections, there can be configured specific checklists.

If we step out of the regulatory inspections field and look at the general impact of checklists, we’ll see a double confirmation about their benefits. A lot of research points out that checklists help experts execute their projects more efficiently. In an essential field like safety inspections, the power of checklists must be utilised to ensure the well-being of workers and the community.

Checklists remind us of the minimum necessary steps and make them explicit. They offer the possibility of verification and instil a kind of discipline of higher performance.

Source: Checklists help eliminate mistakes and improve efficiency.

Why must a safety inspection software have configurable checklists?

Safety inspections are complex, so high configuration must be a part of the requirements of any inspection management solution. A good configurable inspection software will allow regulatory agencies to configure specific checklists for each type of safety inspection – safety inspections for tools and equipment, electrical concerns, scaffolding, etc. Checklists are a very overlooked component in inspection programs. Their function is a gamechanger when it comes to data gathering. Because only detailed and correctly gathered data may generate a valuable inspection report. 

The importance of optimising safety inspection reports

The outcome of a safety inspection ends in a report. The report aims to recommend corrective actions to reduce the risks of hazards in the future. However, a report may not be efficient if the best practices aren’t followed.

The benefits that safety inspection reports bring are:

  1. Capturing error-free inspection data

A good inspection checklist is key to gathering sufficient error-free data that can be exported into an inspection report.

2. Real-time documenting of inspections

Recording inspections in real-time allows inspectors to capture their observations fully. Performing field inspections with a tablet will enable them to capture images in the meantime and attach them to the reporting file. The image can make feedback clear.

3. Complete visibility over inspection data

The digital gathering of inspection data allows inspectors to have better visibility over the inspected subjects. The leverage on data can make inspections more risk-focused and help mitigate risks and improve overall compliance.

4. Make safety inspection reports readable.

Big words and complex sentences have no place in inspection reports. Reports must be understandable and clear. No unreadable handwriting! Automating the generation of inspection reports based on the gathered data and collected observations can ensure the readability of the information.

How to find the right safety inspection software?

The choice of inspection management system depends on the organisation’s strategy. If a government agency follows a cloud-first strategy, its focus must be on cloud inspection services. If the organisation is focused on health and food safety, they should aim at a solution specialising in this sector. The same applies to enterprises that want to transform their internal inspections and audits.

Two rules for preparing safety inspection research:

  1. Find something that will answer your goals – cloud-based solution or on-premise solution?
  2. Find something that will be an excellent fit for your use case – general safety inspections, food safety inspections, environmental inspections, etc.

Related: All you need to know about cloud strategy in government agencies

Prepare a list of requirements and start your research. Then reach out to potential suppliers and book a Product tour or a Demo session that can highlight the features that can provide the execution of the best practices we described above. The next reasonable step would be to order a proof of concept.

Are you looking for safety inspection software? Contact us now, and we’ll help your select the best solution for your safety inspection requirements.

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Inspection optimisation: How to cut fuel costs with route optimisation?

Route optimisation sounds like a thing that you’d expect Google Maps to do for you. But in the work environment of regulatory enforcement and inspection management, inspectors would think otherwise.

Let’s take, for example, the job of the inspector who does construction site inspections every day. Every inspection site includes a list of areas that need inspection checks to ensure compliance with safety standards and other regulations. Sometimes these lists contain hundreds of checkpoints. The small details surrounding the critical work of inspectors make the process slow. Often, inspectors would spend all they travel long distances to inspect one construction site with high priority status and requirement for a high skillset. If the volume of inspection requests grows with time, the Inspectorate will have to hire more inspectors or make the hired ones work and travel more. In both cases, it will mean more expenses.

The old fashioned way of solving the issue with the growth of workload in inspections would be to hire more inspectors and send them to more work spots. But this is also a costly way. It’s the way of the regulatory agencies that are still not going through digital transformation. The question is, what other way can we offer to them?

Resource optimization and business scheduling software

CASE STUDY: How a regulatory agency cut costs with resource scheduling software?
          • reducing the scheduling time with up to 75%
          • increasing efficiency of operations with 40%
          • fully eliminating errors in the resource allocation process.
Download the case study.

What’s the way to reduce the cost of inspections?

The inspection cost depends on the inspector’s location, distance to the inspection site, and inspector’s salary, of course. Suppose we set up manually the inspection scheduling calendar. In that case, the most complex inspection cases will go to the most qualified inspectors. Sometimes, the most qualified inspectors will have to cover the less inspection ground because of the travelling. That is expensive for many reasons. The inspection management software can bring drastic improvements in inspection optimisation by reducing travel time and fuel costs.

How to optimise routing with inspection software?

Imagine that each inspection request is being automatically assigned with a complexity score that considers the location, availability and skillset of all inspectors. Now imagine that this software can match inspectors with a relevant case. And all that while the software is mapping the most optimal inspection routes and considers all of the constraints. That sounds too good to be true. Data-driven automation and AI come into play and make the life of inspectors and everyone in the regulatory agencies easier and way less expensive.

The example with the construction site inspections is not a limit. This kind of inspection optimisation can be applied to other regulatory areas – food safety inspections, fire inspections, education inspections, energy inspections, insurance loss control inspections, etc.

scheduling resource optimisation

How route optimisation changes things for regulators and enterprises?

When we talk about route optimisation, we don’t mean Google Maps. It is more than just finding the shortest available route between points A and B. It’s about finding the most efficient path for someone at point X and going through points A, B, C, D, E and F and spending different amounts of time for inspection. The inspector must make some stops between these points and spend different amounts of time at each one. Finding the most efficient route for such a complex task is not easy to be done manually. That’s why good inspection management software with route optimisation features is needed.

Summary of the inspection optimisation benefits:

Route optimisation reduces the costs of inspections, improves inspectors’ efficiency, and allows them to cover more inspection ground by travelling less and ultimately safe their time.

Is Canalix a route optimisation software?

Canalix is an inspection management solution focused on transforming the inspection model of regulators and enterprises. Route optimisation is a crucial AI-powered feature of the software. Our clients use it not just for transforming inspection processes but also for a wide variety of resource scheduling solutions. Our customer success data shows that our clients reduced the distance travelled by inspectors by up to 40% and managed to cut costs while improving the inspection process.

Do you want an estimate of how much route optimisation can reduce the costs of inspections in your company? Contact us now.

Related: Why do you have to try a proof-of-concept before buying an inspection management software?

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Digital Transformation in Food Safety Inspections – Why It Matters?

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One of the strictest regulation policies in the EU is in the field of food safety. Food safety concerns directly the health of people and their quality of life. That’s why there is strong sensibility to keeping compliance with regulation from the side of the food industry and enforcing regulations from the side of regulatory agencies.

The growing food safety culture leads to the adoption of new technological solutions that can help regulators transform their food inspection model. However, some countries are struggling with the digital transformation of the food safety inspections more than others. In a culture with growing food safety awareness and improved regulatory practices, transforming the inspection management model can make foods even safer.  That’s why the adoption of IT infrastructures in the food safety inspection model is a step that regulators must be taking on (if they haven’t yet).

What can inspection management software do for food safety inspections?

Ditch the paper, embrace the digital

Imagine the paperwork that food safety inspectors and other administrative entities must do to ensure the flow of inspection management. Inspections checklists, copies of documents such as permits, orders, maps, photos of inspection site, etc. It’s a big load of paperwork. Now if we imagine that the paper is being replaced by software that allows everyone to his job digitally, it won’t be hard to see the benefits in terms of productivity.

Related: Have a look at the food safety inspections offering of the inspection management platform of Canalix.

But the question is how a digital document management system can make foods safer? The answer is in the data. It’s very challenging to organize and present data that is based on paper documents spread all over the cabinets of a food inspection agency. If this data is collected and organized via sophisticated inspection management software, then it can be visualized, analyzed and used for identifying trends and building a better visibility on food inspections. In other words data can be used for making smarter and faster decision making that directly affects the optimisation of inspections.

The bonus thing: the use of inspection software with integrated document management system can improve the inspection management process not only in food regulatory agencies, but also in the food industry itself (by serving as a digital infrastructure for internal inspections and audits).

Inspectors inspect more while working less

If the digital document management safes time for inspectors, how can we enable them to use this time to cover more inspection sites and cases? Digital transformation allows regulatory agencies to leverage on technologies such as AI to optimise inspection scheduling and inspection routes so that inspectors can be send on the most optimal inspection routes without causing a conflict in their schedules. The application of such AI-driven inspection management can ultimately lead to long-term cost savings for the regulators because of the optimized resource utilization.

Related: How to reduce the cost of inspections with routing optimisation?

Reduce human errors with the help of data and AI

An employee of the Food Safety Agency may assign wrongfully skilled inspectors to an inspection case. As a result there will be a lot of time and costs wasted for nothing. Automating food safety inspections with the use of data and AI can dramatically reduce the making of such mistakes. The effect of such optimisation can be seen from miles. The question is why it takes so long for the public sector to turn to new technologies that can ensure the safety of our communities?

Related: How AI can transform inspections?

How a food regulator embraces digital transformation?

It all starts with strategy. Your organization has a digital transformation strategy? Good. Then it will be easy for the CIO to prioritize the adoption of inspection software for food safety. Even if your organization doesn’t have a strategy, now is the time to make one.

Contact Canalix here, if you need food safety inspection software and a digital transformation strategy.

Related: Understanding a digital transformation strategy

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Public Sector: How To Approach Digital Acceleration With Inspections?

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“This will change everything” was quite a popular phrase at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the world of business this phrase was mostly connected with changes in terms of digital transformation. But digital transformation has been an ongoing trend for the last 15 years. So what’s the different in digital transformation in the post covid-19 era? The answer is simple: what’s different is the speed of adoption of digital infrastructures. The urgency for action is dictated by the uncertainty in the global situation.

The new world context is affecting the pace of cloud adoption in regulatory inspections as well. A field such as regulatory enforcement that’s focused at ensuring the safety of our communities is a serious matter and the urgency for digital acceleration is very sensible there. It means that decisions must be made on a faster pace to ensure the functioning of law enforcing government agencies in the new reality of mass lockdown with growing infection rates.

If we have to summarize the focus that government agencies must keep in the current COVID-19 recovery era, it will come down to:

  • Government agency need to make faster decisions
  • They should focus on automating inspections and leverage on AI in inspections
  • They should focus on real-time risk assessment
  • They should focus on driving agility in inspections
  • They need to stick to cloud-first approach

And all of these must be done on a much faster pace than before the COVID-19 era. So let’s get to the biggest question in this article:

How does digital acceleration in inspection management looks like?

Like every big question, there are a lot of “depends” in the answer of this one. The digital acceleration in inspections depends mostly on the digital adoption strategy of the organisation. In the public sector this means that the CIO must speed up the decision making in the roadmap of the digital adoption strategy. If there’s no digital adoption strategy in motion, then now is the time to make on.

Related: All you need to know about making a cloud adoption strategy

What are the possible ways do accelerate digital transformation in inspections?

  1. Don’t transform outdated legacy systems, move to an entirely new cloud service designed for inspection management. This can be the faster and smarter approach for transforming inspections. But a careful research is needed.Read our guide: How to find inspection management software online?
  2. If on a central level the government has successful history of cloud implementation, then the good example must be followed. Following an already known path can accelerate digital transformation in inspection. For example if a social care institution has a successful history of implementing cloud based case management solution, then the smart move for this institution will be to follow the same path when implementing an inspection management software.
  3. Reorganize spend and move funds from less valuable initiatives to more urgent ones like cloud adoption.

Related: How to approach cost-efficient cloud adoption?

What to expect from accelerated digital transformation in regulatory inspections?

Doing something on a faster pace in the public sector is definitely not normal. But the new reality must be accepted. This means that there are certain red flags that must be kept in mind when we approach accelerated digital transformation in the public sector:

  1. A balance between efficiency and resilience must be kept.
  2. Inspectors, administrators and functional leaders must be equipped with the required skills.
  3. Configurability that can adequately answer the needs to different use segments in inspections (an inspection software must offer configurability for different type of inspections – food safety inspections, construction building inspections, social care facility inspections, playground inspections, etc.
How You Can Drive Digital Business Acceleration

Related: How governments should prepare for the post-pandemic scenarios?

This all is a part of the strategic planning. Strategic planning includes the conversation for the future and the priorities that must be followed if the most likely future scenario is changed (a thing that already happened on a massive scale with COVID-19). A change of the possible scenario such as the global pandemic might require from CIO’s to change the pacing of the digital adoption strategy for inspections. Disruption is not a bad thing if we are able to predict the outcomes.

Do you need help with the strategic planning for the digital transformation of inspections in your organisation?

Contact us now.

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The Benefits of Performing Field Inspections With Tablets

One of the most demanding jobs is the job of inspectors. From food safety inspections to construction inspections, inspectors are responsible for essential tasks like recording code violations, improving compliance, and creating detailed reports documented by proofs. All of these with the common goal of ensuring the safety of the community. Last but not least, inspection management requires travelling to an inspection field that is organised often on a tight inspection schedule. So a serious thought is needed when it comes to making the work of inspectors more efficient and, at the same time, less stressful.

Transforming legacy inspection systems into digital efficient system is the modern way to optimise inspections. But what comes after that? What kind of optimisation follows after digital transformation of the inspection management system? Let’s see.

The agility of using inspection management software manifests itself not only as a way to remove the paper from the work processes but also to make inspection scheduling more optimal, filling detailed reports faster and covering more inspection sites for less time possible. In other words, good inspection management software will help inspectors to inspect more and work less.

inspection scheduling software

Inspections with mobile devices

Inspectors who travel to make field inspections find benefit not only in the use of inspection management software per se. They find benefit in the agility of the concept of cloud-based platforms for inspection management. This means that the benefits go beyond the software application and capture other uses, such as mobile devices.

Inspectors are often on the go, so the use of mobile devices for inspection purposes is an important opportunity for them. With tablets, they can easily record inspections, take pictures, make notes, etc., while moving. This turns the usability of the inspection software into an essential aspect when testing the solutions of different vendors.

Resource optimization and business scheduling software

CASE STUDY: ACHIEVING RESOURCE SCHEDULING OPTIMISATION IN REGULATORY AGENCY
          • reducing the scheduling time with up to 75%
          • increasing efficiency of operations with 40%
          • fully eliminating errors in the resource allocation process.
Download the case study.

Paperless workflows go hand-to-hand with mobile devices in inspection management.

Certain kinds of inspections, especially those that ensure safety (food safety inspections, fire safety inspections, road safety inspections, playground safety inspections, etc.), involve a lot of paperwork. The complexity of such inspection processes is being optimized to a great extent thanks to inspection management software solutions like Canalix.

Related: The Complexity Of Inspection Management Made Simple

Depending on the type of inspection, inspectors can eliminate the paper filling part by switching to an electronic environment with a pre-defined inspection checklist that is explicitly configured for the kind of inspection that is being made. The collected data can be shared instantly with relevant collaborators. And the best part is that no printing or reorganising of paper documents is needed for that.

Real-time Inspection Scheduling In Inspector’s Pocket

inspection software

Printing inspection schedules can lead to mistakes. Inspectors should always be well informed about their schedules. That’s why allocating jobs is an essential feature for Canalix. Canalix assigns cases to inspectors with a relevant skill set and geolocation thanks to a sophisticated AI complexity scoring algorithm. The allocation becomes visible in real-time in the inspector’s electronic calendar that can be accessed via tablet or smartphone. This intelligent way for inspection scheduling reduces the risk of making mistakes. Last but not least, it improves inspection planning and makes it easier for inspectors to cover more inspection ground by using fewer resources.

Are you looking for reliable inspection management software that will allow inspectors to do field inspections with mobile devices? Then Canalix may be a good fit for your purpose. Contact us now. 

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Government In The Cloud: Myths That CIOs Must Be Aware Of

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Government CIOs have a lot on their hands. Busting myths about cloud adoption is one of them for better or worse. Debunking myths requires their understanding. Even though it sounds like a minor thing to fix, there are myths that can slow down governments and enterprises on their road to digital transformation.

1. “Saving money is the only cloud adoption motive”

Cost-efficiency is important and cloud adoption is the best long-term direction to achieve it. However this is not the solely reasons that enterprises and government are turning to cloud. For decades there’s been stereotypes about the government that everything that happens there is slow and outdated. Cloud adoption is a key not only to cost-efficiency, but also to agility.

Government CIOs must look not only at financial cost-optimisation sheets, they must be looking beyond that. For this they need to analyse different use cases of cloud. In order for cost goals to be achieved, the usability of the cloud solution must be explored.

Related: How to approach cost-efficient cloud adoption

How to ensure that the cost optimisation goals will be achievable?

CIOs and digital transformation leaders must be aware of the importance of proof-of-concepts (PoC). This is a demo software that covers predefined use cases.

Example:
If you’re a CIO that is exploring opportunities for cloud adoption in government agency for food safety, you don’t just buy a software through online checkout. You run some meetings with the supplier of the cloud service and then you ask for PoC that can recreate a specific experience. This experience might be running an inspection management process with the supplier’s cloud software. This is one of the best ways to ensure that the cloud solution can actually deliver the cost-optimisation that is promised.

Related: The Importance of testing inspection software with PoC

Contact Canalix now if you’re looking for inspection software demo that can deliver specific use case.

2. “Cloud is the end goal”

Formulating a cloud strategy is important. Governments and enterprise that haven’t adopted cloud yet, must look at their strategy first. However, when the stage of implementing the cloud comes, the functional leaders must be aware of the end goal. And they must be educated that the cloud is just a means to achieving the goal. The goals may be agility, cost savings, resource utilization, improving the user experience for citizens, public servants, inspectors, etc.

Related: Understanding cloud strategy in governments

Implementing cloud solutions in governments is not a single warrior effort. It’s a group effort. That’s why CIOs must invest some time in making everyone involved in the implementation phase to understand the benefits that cloud will bring to the organization’s processes.

3. “Migrating to cloud is one-time effort”

Let’s say that a local government adopts cloud by using case management software. This is one path to cloud. But there are also many other different paths. If the local government has a successful use of the cloud case management software, it means that they should adapt cloud for other processes as well. This is the moment where CIOs must prepare the organizations to go along a new cloud transformation road.

Example:

Once the operation process of case worker is optimized via cloud solution, then it’s natural for the organization to optimize the rest of the processes. As a next step in this example it would be strategically smart to transform the work of inspectors by adopting inspection management software to fully leverage the cloud principle. This is a good example for long term digital transformation planning, that is designed to bring gradual improvements.

Related: How investing in cloud create saving for governments and enterprises

It other words it means that once a government successfully moves a process in the cloud, doesn’t mean that the work is finished. It means that work begins. This is a complex process. It means that the CIOs must be careful when choosing cloud supplier, because the supplier must be not only a service delivery entity, but also a great consultant and partner.

Get in touch with Canalix if you need to book a consultation for adopting cloud in the inspection management.

Contact us.

4. “Cloud is overrated, companies are moving away from cloud”

Companies are not moving away from cloud. On the contrary. Today the migration to cloud is safer than ever. This can be confirmed by data from a single google search. Actually we’ve written a dedicated blog post about the cloud adoption being a key player in the post-pandemic new normal.

Read it here: Cloud – the new normal of regulatory compliance (with insights from IT decision makers for cloud adoption)

5. “Our cloud strategy is to move one of our processes on the cloud”

Strategy is a big thing. It should set a long-term direction with end goals. CIOs in governments and enterprises are responsible for formulating the cloud adoption strategy. Along the way for achieving these goals, there must be strategic plans. These plans have the objective to set the right priority for cloud migration and to form a cloud implementation plan. They must not be mistaken for cloud strategy.

Related: Everything you need to know about cloud adoption

Summary

Setting apart myths from facts is a key step for ensuring that everyone understands the benefits of cloud. It all starts from the IT leaders in governments and enterprises, they formulate the strategy, they debunk the myths. The second figure next to them are the functional leaders of the different departments – inspectorates, financial departments, human resources, etc. Together with the IT leaders they must share a common understanding of the benefits of cloud. Ensuring that all levels of the organization – whether it’s public or private organization – understand the reality behind myths will enable organizations to fully leverage on the benefits of the cloud.

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Digital transformation across all government services – how to achieve this?

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Comparing governments with businesses has always helped individuals to understand the concept of government better. It’s the same when it comes to comparing digital transformation in enterprises with eGovernment transformation. In both cases we have a big structure that is divided on different department levels – finances, social care, justice, food safety, road safety, etc. However, in terms of complexity there will always be one winner – and it’s the government.

How complexity differs in businesses and governments?

Businesses are serving the market and make their decisions with the goal of extracting a benefit from the market. Governments are beyond that – they serve both the public and the business and have a regulatory function to make decisions based on information that is gathered with paperwork or e-government services. That’s why we talk about whole other level of complexity.

If we take a close look at different levels within a government we will be able to gain a clear picture on the complexity we’re talking about. Let’s take for an example the structure of the government financial management. If a business doesn’t plan budgets wisely and doesn’t take financial decisions based on objectives like cost-efficiency, then the business will collapse. It’s the same with the public sector. That’s why financial systems have streamlined processes and principles that ensure the financial vitality of an organization.

Related: How to approach cost-efficient cloud adoption in governments?

If a closed eco-system like a small or medium business starts automating their financial management process by process, then we will have a classic digital transformation plan in action. Things in governments are a little bit more complicated. It’s simply so because the complexity of governments requires from the IT decision makers, CIOs and functional leaders the look further in the picture.

Why government CIOs need to look further in the digital transformation picture?

Let’s take for an example a social care regulator. Digital transformation in such structure will start by transforming the internal processes: first automating case management operations, then the inspection management processes, etc. The next stage of transformation will capture the processes with external agents by building up self-service portals. The self-service portals might serve the needs of the Ministry of social care at first and then expand to serving citizens. At certain point the social care bodies will have too much portals to work with. This is the moment when the CIO must come with a solution to integrate the automated processes and move every service under the same roof. This is what we call a fully functional eGovernment platform. To realise the full potential of this concept, CIOs must be able to look far in the digital transformation picture.

Transforming one process may catalyse big transformation across the economy

In times where changes happen fast, public finances are concerned with issues such as cost optimisation and efficient allocation of public money. E-government solutions are common means to achieve this. However, the transformation can’t encompass all government areas at once. It always starts with a single process and ends up transforming the whole ecosystem. In terms of where transformation in the public sector starts from, it always starts with the biggest areas of expenditures. These might be: social care and health, food safety, construction, financial regulations, etc.

Read more: How to set an eGovernment strategy?

So if we look for an answer to the big question how to drive digital transformation across all government services, we must stick to the old rule: start with a strategy. Then do things process by process. Make a long-term plan and create a team that will help you achieve this.

Are you looking for an eGovernment platform that will allow you to integrate automated services like case management and inspection management? Contact us.

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How investing in cloud services creates savings for government agencies?

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Everyone have heard government leaders talking about cutting costs. This is a budgetary policy that is happening in every EU country. Now in times of global health, social and economic crisis, these conversations are taking place more often than ever. Making cuts in the budgets seems like a shortcut to getting numbers in order. But shortcuts are not everything. A long-term cost optimisation policy is the smarter way to go for a variety of reasons.

Related: How digital safety inspection program can reduce the cost of inspections?

Shortcut plan vs long-term strategy?

The use of outdated systems in the public sector has led to reduction of the work load and challenged the efficiency of areas like regulatory enforcement in the peak of the covid-19 in Europe. More specifically the inspection management part of the regulatory agencies was challenged when strict social distance measures applied. This affected the citizens and the efficiency of the workforce, operating on the inspection management part.

Read now: A guide for finding the best inspection management software online

As a result there are a lot of conversation about cutting costs in government agencies now. However, optimizing costs is the direction for government agencies that are using outdated systems to run their processes.

“Government leaders often fall into “salami-slicing” budget cuts across the board. “Government leaders’ approach is to make incremental cuts to budgets areas across the board, rather than taking a more strategic cost optimization approach. These cuts can be particularly damaging to IT, derailing digital projects and ignoring the positive impact that budget spent on IT can have in reducing costs elsewhere in the organization.” says Cathleen E. Blanton, research vice president at Gartner.

Digital Transformation Drives Efficiency and Cost Optimisation

With the events that happened in 2020, government CIOs must evaluate whether the government agencies can deliver their services to the public with the current work model. After this assessment is made, the CIO must research alternative models of work. We’re living in the age of cloud technologies, so if we talk about transforming an overlooked field like inspection services, the cloud alternative must be on the top of the list.

Related: All you need to know about cloud adoption in government agencies

By researching cloud alternatives, CIOs must focus on the values of the cloud, but also to make sure that the new work models won’t be a challenge for the workforce. The values may vary. For example in the inspection management part the value may be about optimizing costs for travel of inspectors, in the case management part it may be about optimizing the processing time. The values vary at the different levels of government organizations. The good news is that with a good plan, CIOs may have an overview of the expected outcomes before buying a cloud software for inspections or for somethings else.

Related: Why is it a good idea to test a cloud software with PoC (proof of concept)?

Plan smart, implement cloud smarter

Adopting cloud for government agencies is not a simple task. It must be planned carefully and at different stages. If we look at the wholesome of processes behind regulatory enforcement, we will see room for different software solutions – inspection scheduling, inspection management, compliance management, case management, self-service portals and other e-government solutions. If the cloud implementation is planned to cover different solutions at different stage, then it will be one smart plan that will not only implement cloud, but will also do it in progressive way. It means that at every stage the workforce will be more mature to extract the values that are promised by the cloud.

Related: How route optimisation reduces costs in regulatory agencies?

The strategic approach of cost optimisation requires long term planning skills. This approach starts with formulating clear strategy and then implementing it.

Related: How to formulate cloud adoption strategy?

How to choose the right cloud service supplier?

There are hundreds of options on the SaaS market of cloud solutions for e-governments. However, when choosing a cloud service supplier, CIOs must look for something more than that. They need to identify a supplier, who is willing to be a partner and contribute to the planning of the most optimal cloud adoption plan.

Do you need help for cloud integration of inspection software and case management platforms for government agencies? Or you just want to start with gathering data via self-service portals and plan the further cloud adoption for other public services?

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How Governments Should Prepare For The Post Pandemic Scenarios?

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Just as almost everywhere in the world, governments in EU are facing wave of strategic decisions designed to help government agencies to be prepared for new global outbreaks of covid-19. The functional leaders within government agencies and enterprises are engaged in planning activities that are supposed to fix the damages that the pandemic inflicted not only on the social and economic life, but also on the work process within their own functions. The good post pandemic plan start with looking at certain possible scenarios.

What do we mean by “possible scenario”?

Since the global pandemic is still not well known from the science, there are hundreds of possible outcomes for the next few months. When we describe those possible outcomes, then we have a possible scenario for the future. Describing a few different directions for the future is what would mean to have a possible scenario. As we already mentioned in our previous blog post, researches made among IT decision makers are already indicating that the changes induces by the pandemic are more likely to be permanent.

Related: Cloud inspection solutions – the new normal of regulatory compliance

The promise for permanency of the new normal is what drives the major wave of rethinking and reshaping strategy in enterprises and governments. The adoption of cloud technology is what seems to be one of the major directions to go with for government agencies. The government CIOs have the hard task of driving these conversations and preparing their organizations to respond in the most optimal way to these possible future scenarios.

Related: How to formulate the cloud adoption strategy for government agency?

What’s the plan for the government agencies?

Let’s check what data we have so far. There are possibilities of new waves of covid-19 infections, new lockdown and social measures to slow the spread of the pandemic. Researches are saying that the new work models are likely here to stay. Based on this data we can assume how the next months and years are going to look like.

However, having a possible scenario doesn’t mean that we can forecast the state of financial sheets. It only means that we can plan a transformation model that will:

1) Allow the workforce to operate remotely

For example:
In case of another regime of strict measures, the workforce must be able to work from home by using an electronic workspace. This is why it’s important for every government agency to have a well formulated cloud adoption strategy.

Related: Everything you need to know about cloud adoption in government.

2) Allow the organization to save costs in the long run

For example:
Cost-efficiency must be a priority when the organization transitions to cloud. The new solution must allow the company to cut costs. For example if we talk about digital transformation of regulatory agency, then the agency may have to change to using cloud inspection software. With the use of AI and data automation the software can optimize the allocation of resources and therefore cut on costs.

Related: How to approach cost efficient cloud adoption?

What makes a good strategic decision?

The bottom line is that when CIOs plan for the future, they must look at new directions and do it with the understanding that these directions are new realities. They must come up with strategy that will allow the organization to be fully functional for the times ahead. No matter what scenario rolls out, the CIOs decisions’ outcome must be sure win for the organization. That’s what makes the decision strategic. Do you want to know more about strategic decisions in the field of e-government solutions such as case management and inspection management?

Contact us now.

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Debunking 4 Myths About AI Technologies

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“The robots will replace humans and there will be no jobs for people”. In the distant past the unknown was a source for imagining evil powers that threaten everything that humans created. Today the new technologies serve as the new unknown and we create myths about them too. The myths have always been here to help us invent villains. But with more knowledge at our hands, we also got better at debunking them.

AI technologies are making its way in all levels of governments and enterprises today. That’s why it’s more and more important for CIOs to understand the value of AI without making wrong assumptions, based on myths. Are you ready to bust a few myths about AI with us?

Let’s start with myth #1:

AI can replace human thinking?

Artificial intelligence is called artificial for a reason. It can replace human intelligence up to a point. AI can learn how to execute tasks, but if the conditions of this task change, then AI will fail. To say that AI will replace human thinking sounds more like a Terminator movie plot and less like reality.

AI can learn things independently of human touch

AI technologies do not learn on their own. They need human control. The AI needs updates, constant integration of new knowledge, etc. That’s why when choosing an AI boosted software service, CIOs must pay close to attention to the technological state of the product they will use.

Related: Guide for finding the best inspection management software

AI makes decisions independently of humans

AI is data & rules-driven technology. Rules are defined by human experts. While the AI can independently solve simple tasks, based on pre-defined rules, sometimes there is complexity that is far beyond the capacity of AI. This is where human involvement is needed. We have a perfect example for the way AI can transfer the decision-making to a human party:

Let’s imagine that a citizen is filing an appeal for review to a government agency that is governing the field inspections. While the citizen files the data of his appeal on the front-end of the Agency’s website, on the back-end an AI is trying to categorise the complexity of the case based on the gathered data.

With a well defined set of rules, the AI would be able to set a relevant complexity score. If the case is too complex (above certain score) it will be send for review by human. If the case is simple enough for automatic processing through the AI, then it will be automatically allocated to an inspector and the inspection scheduling and execution will happen in the most optimal way.

Related: Learn more about inspection management and AI complexity score

We worked so far so good, so we don’t need AI

AI is not a magic that will instantly improve the business outcomes within an organization. Whether your company needs or does not need AI, it should be a decision based on data. In other worlds, every CIO must be able to answer why his organization does or does not need AI.

Having visibility on technologies and knowing how they can or can’t help on the strategy of the organization is important. The business needs are ever evolving and the decisions that are made today may not apply for tomorrow’s technological landscape. That’s why no matter where a government agency or an enterprise may stand in terms of adopting AI, they must have their research done.

Debunking myths is easy. Staying always alert to how technologies evolve is hard. Do you want to follow what’s new with AI and inspection software? Sign up for our newsletter.

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