Conwy County Borough Council reduce Social Services admin overheads by over 2,000 days with RPA

In 2020, Conwy Council migrated almost 12 million social service records with the use of innovative Robotic Process Automation (RPA), allowing the team’s focus to remain on providing high-quality services to the residents of North Wales. The project allowed Conwy Council to revolutionise the accessibility of records for social care professionals - migrating from their restrictive legacy system to the new, country-wide Wales Community Care Information System (WCCIS).

The Council is responsible for both coastal and inland towns, supporting a total of 118,000 Welsh citizens – including a large elderly population, meaning a successful and quick migration was essential.

The challenge

Conwy’s legacy system was due to expire with almost 12 million documents awaiting migration into the new system, WCCIS. WCCIS is accessed by Local Authority personnel across the country of Wales, providing care professionals with instant access to essential citizen information - as well as the ability to easily share health and social care information with fellow care providers.

With Social Care services frequently accessed by residents in the region – particularly by the Council’s large number of elderly residents - it was essential this data was successfully migrated from the legacy system. 

Given the volume of data to migrate – as well as the range of case notes and assessments attached to each record - this was a significant project for Conwy Council’s Digital Transformation team. After considering several approaches, it quickly became apparent that there was insufficient resource within the Council to perform this task as a manual operation, and that any such migration would be prone to error.

The solution

Conwy had previously utilised RPA elsewhere in the Authority, so felt confident robotic process automation could provide the solution yet again. With previous experience, skills and knowledge of NDL Automate, the Council utilised the low-code technology to maintain full control of the migration project.

To achieve a successful data migration, Conwy Council used a combination of attended and un-attended RPA. After starting with an initial digital workforce of 10 bots, the Council eventually scaled up to use 40 unattended and attended bots, in order to meet timescales dictated by the expiry of the legacy system. Conwy deployed the digital workforce to work concurrently to extract PDFs, with some client records taking several hours to complete due to the complexity of each document.

After the team initiated the process in early December, the data migration was completed successfully before the March 2021 deadline – with all documents transferred before the legacy system’s decommissioning. The Social Services team now have full access to the information they need when using WCCIS.

The benefits

RPA digital workforce worked 24/7 to ensure that almost 12 million documents were successfully migrated into WCCIS. This approach saved an estimated 2,000 manual working days – which equates to onboarding a team of eight temporary employees on a full-time basis for one year.

By operating error-free, the digital workforce was able to guarantee quality and consistency throughout the mass migration of social care data. Confidentiality of sensitive social care information was also guaranteed throughout the process - as RPA mitigated any GDPR risk - and financial savings were also made, thanks to the removal of the legacy system and its supporting infrastructure.

• Almost 12 million citizen records now fully accessible by Conwy Council social care professionals remotely through WCCIS
• 2,000 working days saved during the migration process
• Cost savings from removing legacy system, support and temporary recruitment

What's next?

To maximise its investment, Conwy Council is constantly developing new RPA projects, specifically focusing on the development of digital tools for quality service. Automation is already being considered to provide end-to-end integration and digitisation in other areas of the Authority, such as highway maintenance and public health. If you think RPA could benefit your public service, don’t hesitate to get in touch with a member of our team.