Telegraph/Microsoft case study interview/Lewisham Council/Sue Tabbitt

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Cleaning up Britain's streets in one clean sweep
By Sue Tabbitt

There's nothing like financial pressure to foster new thinking, especially where the required results are 'more for less', and Lewisham Council is a shining example of an organisation that is pushing the boundaries to deliver real progress.

Its LoveCleanStreets initiative, which has transformed the clean-up of waste and graffiti on local streets through innovative use of the Internet, has been so transformative that it is now being adopted all over London, as well as much further a-field. And what's making this possible? Cloud computing.

The project is the brainchild of Nigel Tyrell, head of environment at the London Borough of Lewisham. Conceived in 2004, the idea was to reverse the negative impact of overflowing rubbish, fly-tipping and graffiti - but at a reduced cost - with the direct help of the public and street workers. Anyone who spotted a problem was encouraged to upload photographic evidence to a specially designated web site. The council's environment department would then provide an update, complete with new photos.

The impact of this initiative has been overwhelmingly positive. The time taken to process a new complaint has been cut by 87% and administration-intensive casework by 21%. Cleansing spend, meanwhile, has been held at 2002/3 levels, yet standards have significantly increased (graffiti has more than halved) and resident satisfaction has soared.

The facility is generating new revenues, too. Because bin collections are being more closely monitored, Tyrell's department can promote new or enhanced refuse collection contracts to commercial premises that have previously skimped on services. "Last year in Lewisham we increased our income from trade waste by £20,000, and we're not a very rich borough," Tyrell says.

The council has also won several awards for the scheme. Not surprisingly, others now want to follow Lewisham's example, and Tyrell is keen that they shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel. It was this vision that led Lewisham to move its web project into the cloud.

Initially, the council had run the web service using its own IT systems. Although this worked well, the scope of the initiative was constrained by finite internal resources. "We had a vision for taking our project to the rest of London and beyond, but we didn't have the capacity to do it ourselves," he explains. "Lewisham alone handles some 300-400 clean-up jobs each week through the web site. This figure would be multiplied by 30 if the service was extended to London as a whole."

Tyrell wanted to introduce a freedom that he took for granted outside of the office. "Collaborating on the Internet is something we all do without thinking in our home lives, but it seems to take time for the work environment to catch up," he says.

Following approaches from councils across the UK, and even as far away as Kingston, Jamaica, Tyrell launched a new generic, cloud-based version of the service, LoveCleanStreets, in 2010. This is based on Microsoft's Azure web services platform, designed for the development and delivery of cloud-based applications, allowing these to be easily scaled and replicated.

Now, one core system, supported by potentially unlimited IT resources (all available at the flick of a switch and paid for as a monthly utility-based service charge), has the potential to serve any number of councils and affiliated organisations, who can customise the look and feel of the application as desired.

Being able to simply switch on more IT resources as needs dictate means the service won't slow down if too many people are uploading large image files at the same time.

"It makes no sense at all for everyone to develop their own web applications if we're all trying to do the same thing," Tyrell concludes. "To survive the Government cuts, we need to be pooling ideas and resources a lot more. Cloud computing makes this possible."