Computers to help gauge city aspirations

COUNCIL chiefs aim to find out what makes Hull tick by using IT systems to get on the same wavelength as the community they serve.

Hard-pressed council tax payers will also benefit from savings when the city council cleans up its computer data bases, officials say.

The authority believes it can get better deals in areas such as buying in services by improving the flow of information to the decision-makers.

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Hull is already one of the first authorities to get involved in "social marketing" where local government sets out to change local attitudes.

A pilot study is currently taking place with the waste management service, encouraging higher levels of recycling.

However, the council's head of executive support, Alistair Doxat-Purser, believes a smarter computer system could go beyond number and data crunching and to get much deeper into the heads of the people it serves.

He said: "A step beyond understanding the behaviours and attitudes of customer groups is to learn more about why certain attitudes and behaviours develop in the first place.

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"This is commonly described as 'aspirations' which are the goals and outcomes residents are striving for themselves."

A community partner group called Hull's People Panel had been running for almost two years and used by a number of services since it started.

Significant sums of money had been saved through using the panel instead of independently commissioning their own survey work, Mr Doxat-Purser said.

He added: "The development of a tool to measure aspiration is unique to Hull within the UK. The intention is to pilot an adapted tool from the social determination theory using the Hull People's Panel."

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