Local services
Providing a roadmap for local authorities Anique Bravenboer, alliance manager at Yotta, explains the importance of keeping services up and running in the lockdown and beyond In many different countries, people take a high standard of public services for granted. Tidy streets and well-kept parks and gardens are a common sight in countries all over the world. No one looks twice when walking past an empty, clean litter bin in the street. People tend to forget the importance of, and the urgent need for, local services. Often, they see these services as a public right, something that they have become accustomed to paying for through taxes. In many countries the streetlights, highways and local waste collection services are regarded as part of a duty of care that the local authority has towards its residents. In short, the public often just assume that council services are there today and always be. For the first time in decades the advent of the coronavirus pandemic called the ongoing resilience and continuity of these services into question. Very few could have predicted the virulence and the reach of the global Covid-19 pandemic. At the beginning of the year, any risk projection model that predicted that large swathes
of the world’s population would be in lockdown within months would have been seen as fanciful in the extreme.
usual: service levels that were the same or similar to what residents were used to. This was and will continue to be a big ask. The public is often the Business continuity harshest critic of local The truth is councils have faced authority departments. unprecedented challenges Residents are likely For the in continuing to deliver to voice their fi rst time in services to their strong opinion communities during the when anything the adv decades coronavirus crisis. Local in the public corona ent of the virus pa authorities quickly space fails ndemic called t came to realise that to reach resilienc he ongoing to ensure business the high e and c continuity at a time standards of thes when some staff would they expect. e servicontinuity need to be working at For councils, questio es into home and others might the big n be ill or self-isolating, question all they needed to be able through this to efficiently manage their crisis has been: how operational resources. That would can levels of resilience be a key pre-requisite to ensuring network and business continuity be resilience and keeping services up and guaranteed in public services during these running during the pandemic. To keep the unprecedented times and what will the public on-side and engaged, however, approach taken bring to our society after it was important to deliver business as the virus has gone? E Issue 27.3 | GOVERNMENT BUSINESS MAGAZINE
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