Team of the Year - the Academy Project Team

Published on 24 March 2010

The second staff award is for the Epping Forest District Council Team of the Year award for Innovation 2010 goes to the Academy Project Team. Whenever a new system is introduced, you can expect a degree of delay and disruption. If computers are involved, you can anticipate more problems.

So when Councillors agreed to change the biggest and most sophisticated IT system for tax collection and benefit payments, with some 65,000 different individual accounts, and not knowing a major economic recession was just around the corner, you might have thought the Council was in trouble.

The old system was Orbis. Responsibility for its replacement with Academy was given to a team drawn from Finance and ICT. The team showed great flexibility, intelligence and determination, acquiring new skills and devising solutions to complex problems along the way. And the team continued to provide high quality services with minimal disruption to residents throughout, at a time when demand for Council Tax rebates and Housing Benefit was increasing. The result has been a textbook case of best practice.

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