Elected Technologies Blog

Caseworker in Canada

Fri, 24 Mar 2023 13:00:47 GMT

At Elected Technologies, we understand the daily work challenges that elected representatives and their teams handle. No company in the world knows politicians working within the Westminster system like we do.

That's why our products have become firmly established in the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, helping over 1000 politicians to manage their casework and correspondence. Since 2020, we’ve also been used by Canadian elected representatives too, and we think you should join them.

Our software is easy to use, and makes your work a breeze. You can do everything in one place, track every interaction from start to finish, and allow your team to collaborate. Simply put, we uncomplicate things.

Our Head of Product, Matt, will be in Canada next month, chatting to offices like yours about what we can do, so if you want to book a slot, get in touch today!

Work smarter with Caseworker

Wed, 27 Oct 2021 15:44:54 GMT

A clear view of constituent engagement

With Caseworker you'll find your office saving hours of time and making everyone's lives easier, while still producing great results. One reason is the powerful features Caseworker has to allow users to do exactly what they want without any messing around. But it's also about how the system helps workflow and efficiency, and gives real clarity about what's going on.

Every office knows what it's like to have a constituent who needs help with a long running problem, or how difficult issues always re-emerges after a quiet few months. It'll naturally be hard to remember exactly what has happened previously, who's done what or what the latest information is. With Caseworker, because you have your case history so clearly set out you'll be able to quickly catch up with what's been going on whenever you come back to it

Bulk Case Creation in Caseworker

Fri, 29 May 2020 15:05:00 GMT

We’ve just launched a new feature called bulk case creation, to help offices manage large numbers of emails in a different way. We wanted to let you know more about how it works, and why it works that way.

Why bulk case creation?

We know that campaign emails or, more generally, multiple emails on the same subject, take up a lot of time. That’s why we have always wanted to provide features to manage this type of correspondence, while trying to meet two main objectives. Firstly, to ensure constituents get a reply while minimising the impact on staff, but also to help an office benefit from good data at the same time. This is important to feed into your statistics on what's going on in your constituency, while allowing you to update these people on the same issue in the future. We also want to preserve a full chronological correspondence history if your constituent responds to your initial reply.

The traditional feature we've provided to speed up campaign responses has been quick reply emails. The idea of this is to allow an office to reply to emails as they come into your inbox, while creating a case with the correct categorisation, close that case and mark the email as actioned - all in just a couple of clicks per email.

However we know that some offices prefer to assign emails to cases and then do bulk emails or mail merged letters with a response. That’s why we have now launched bulk case creation, so you don’t need to create each case manually. You will be able to select multiple emails, assign them to new cases or an existing relevant case on that constituent, and send a bulk email or mail merged letter to those who need it.

How does it work?

Just select the emails in your inbox that you want to create the same case for, by holding down the control key while clicking on them to select multiple emails at once. You can also hold down the shift button to select all emails between the two emails you click on. Then select the ‘bulk create case’ button in the top right corner of the inbox

Enter the case details that you want each of these cases to have, we recommend focussing on a good number of specific tags, that are useful for your stats, and also for grouping together these specific cases later on.

Choose whether you want these emails to be added to existing cases if they are present. This means that, if you want, you can only send an email or letter to cases that have been created recently, and exclude those who you’ve spoken to before.

You will be be told how many emails you will be processing, and asked to confirm you want to proceed

If the email addresses in your list match against existing constituents, then the new cases will be placed against those records. If there are no matching emails addresses then you will be shown matching names in your system. If there’s none of those then you can search for someone you've already created, or create a new constituent either by entering the details yourself or searching the electoral roll manually.

You will be able to cycle through this process to ensure that each is properly logged against the right constituent record, and that the constituent record has the right information. You can also skip emails if you believe they should be responded to individually, or were added by mistake.

When you’re done, you will be told how many cases were created, and how many were matched to existing cases, then the emails will be marked as actioned and removed from your inbox.

You can now go to the cases page, perform a search to narrow down the results to the cases you just created and choose whether you send a mail merged letter or a bulk email, through the bulk actions button.

Gaining Insight with Caseworker

Thu, 07 May 2020 14:15:00 GMT

In 2020, constituents are interacting with their elected representatives more than ever. That’s great for continuing democracy between elections, however it provides a technical challenge for our MPs and their offices. But this volume of interaction gives an opportunity for greater understanding of their residents too.

A healthy number of constituents still send letters though a majority of the correspondence is now made up of emails, while other bits come in via social media, like Twitter and Facebook. The prevalence of digital tools amongst modern populations makes this interaction easier, and cheaper, for constituents - so engagement numbers for elected representatives have gone through the roof in recent years.

More and more elected representatives are also taking advantage of these changes themselves, and taking steps to encourage as much contact as possible. This is because while the process is good for constituents, it’s also great for the politicians themselves. Most politicians know the constituency or region they represent really well, and they have a good handle on what’s going on. But they can always gain greater insight to inform their work, and high levels of engagement is a vital step in gathering the data required to acquire that enhanced view.

Thanks to these modern technologies, MPs are now being directly contacted over 500 times a week. When you reach that volume it's impossible for one person to immediately know everything that’s going on in detail. You just can't gain a full understanding of the constituents without some kind of assistance, politicians and their staff require digital solutions to really understand the data.

Caseworker does just this, to help elected representatives who want to maximise what they get from the interactions they have with the public.

So how does Caseworker help?

Gives structure to your data, allowing comparison over time

With Caseworker you are able to ensure that every interaction is properly categorised in a similar way. As the system helps you ensure that everything is logged under a broad based policy area, a category, a contact type and tags, you know your data is structured properly, every time.

It's key that the data is logged for every case in a consistent way. That's because firstly you need the data to exist in a visible and accessible way in the first place, and secondly you need that data to be comparable over time in order to notice and track trends.

The other advantage of Caseworker is that, because the system is easy to use, your office is able to log all of this information quickly and with little friction. That means it doesn't feel like data entry, it's just a by product of doing the job.

Makes sudden spikes or trends in issues clear

Now you're gathering this information while you're doing your jobs, what can be done with it? The advantage of Caseworker is that it provides the information to you clearly. You'll be able to see which tags you use most often in any time period you want, making it clear at a glance what's happening at that time.

This information is then displayed to you throughout the system, giving you a regular view about what's happening in your area

Enables you to cut through ‘noise’ and look at specifics

One of the problems of large amounts of data is the risk of being blinded to some of the seemingly smaller things that are going on. Even though they might see lower volumes of correspondence, in reality they might actually be more important.

For example you may have received 200 emails from individuals about a particular national policy issue, and that should be noted. However you have to avoid missing 10 people contacting about a specific problem that is causing real issues in their lives.

That's why we allow everything in Caseworker to be filtered, to find that detail in what's going on.

On the statistics page you can can decide to look at only stats on Casework issues, or just policy issues. While on the Cases tab you have full flexibility to find the granular detail you're looking for

Flexible control of your data

Another key part of our philosophy, is that everything you add to Caseworker, and all the information you log in the system is yours, and will always be yours.

That means that you can do whatever you wish to with that data. If you want to export email mailing lists of people who've signed up to a newsletter, you can do. If you want to export out case information as a .csv file to analyse externally you can do that too. We want to provide you with the flexibility to achieve your goals with Caseworker.

All of this means that, while Caseworker helps you and your office work at scale, it also ensures you're able to gain real insight into what's happening, and cut through to the detail you need.

Caseworker Version 2!

Mon, 17 Feb 2020 11:04:00 GMT

We've been working on a new version of Caseworker for quite a while now, so it's really exciting that we're now at a point where users have started using it.

After collating and reviewing all the feedback we've had from our customers over the years, our development team have been focusing on a couple of things. Firstly, refreshing the user interface which had stayed relatively static since 2017, to fit in with the modern web, as well making it more suitable for modern devices with larger screens and higher definition displays. The other focus has been delivering as many of the features our users have been requesting as possible, while making it easier to develop new features more quickly in the future.

We've also made some more boring technical changes to help the system run faster, as well as making it easier for us to manage on our end. We will also host our UK customer's data within the UK, rather than the EU.

All new offices that sign up to Caseworker now get Version 2 by default, and our existing users will be transferred over in the coming months. There won't be any impact on these existing users either. If you're an existing Caseworker office, you'll just log in on the day you've been transferred, in the exact same way as before, and you'll see the new interface and new features.

So what are these new features? There's quite a few, but some of the highlights are:

And there's still quite a few more! When you go live on Version 2 you'll be sent a new manual, which you can still find within the system in the Tools section. If you have any questions you can always get hold of our support team, as normal, by phone or email.

Caseworker - Coming to Canada!

Mon, 03 Feb 2020 10:57:00 GMT

After a few months of preparation, we're excited to say that Caseworker, the world leading software helping MPs run their offices, manage casework and track correspondence is now ready to make the leap from the UK to Canada!

From next month we'll be making our Caseworker software available in Canada, and we think the system will be able to help elected representatives there, as much it has already helped those in similar roles around the world.

Caseworker was only launched a few years ago, but we already count almost 95% of UK MPs as users. We're also used by more than half of both the Scottish Parliament's MSPs and Welsh Assembly Members.

In just a few years, Caseworker quickly became the market dominant correspondence and casework management software in UK politics - and we're growing fast in Australia and New Zealand too! We're proud of our track record of delivery of providing reliable, helpful, easy-to-use software to elected representatives in regional and national Parliaments around the world.

We spend every day thinking about how we can help MPs and other regional politicians, to make your life easier, workflow faster and data clearer. We want to build on our work helping MPs in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, and deliver something really useful for our future customers in Canada.

We'll be in Canada in March, meeting with MPs and their offices. If you're interested in finding out more about how we can help you, and you're based in Canada - just let us know!

Digital Transformation and Caseworker

Mon, 09 Sep 2019 15:58:00 GMT

Digital transformation has come increasingly into focus as a priority for councils around the UK as they seek new ways of working, in order to increase efficiency and reduce costs in the face of falling budgets. All of this while improving the standard of services! One of the most common ways of delivering successful digital transformation projects has been to work hand in hand with cloud software providers to provide both internal and external services. We’re at the forefront of replacing tired ways of working in the public sector, whether they’re paper based or rely on slow, complicated desktop software.

Elected Technologies has become experienced in delivering these cloud software solutions to Councils and other public bodies to transform how they deliver a variety of services in new ways. Our software has a number of advantages; primarily its cost-effectiveness and ease of use which allows for quick adoption from day one from even those who would normally consider themselves to be technophobic. Our pricing allows organisations to move with speed to put our services in place, and then users are able to hit the ground running straight away.

On top of this, Caseworker has a wide range of uses within your organisation, with the flexibility for you to be able to use one product to solve a variety of problems. Growing out of providing casework and correspondence management software to elected representatives, including Councillors, Elected Technologies is now well versed in providing software for a wide array of Council functions, including correspondence and complaint management, FOI/SAR management and financial inclusion outreach, in addition to Member support.

Who are Elected Technologies?

Elected Technologies was launched in 2015 to provide casework and correspondence management tools for MPs. After growing rapidly we now count 65% of all UK MPs as users of the Caseworker system, along with half of the Members of both the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, in addition to significant numbers of MLAs in Northern Ireland and MEPs.

As of August 2019 Caseworker is utilised by 3500 users, in almost 600 offices, to manage thousands of correspondence enquiries from constituents and to progress individual pieces of casework, each and every day. We have built this up over 4 years, on the back of word of mouth about a reliable, easy to use system that really delivers results.

As many members of staff for elected representatives work as councillors, or go on to work for other public bodies, we received a huge number of requests to provide a system like Caseworker for them too. That’s why we created Caseworker.gov.

What can Caseworker do?

Elected Technologies, through our Caseworker products, can provide cloud solutions for numerous business areas. Our modular design ensures you can use Caseworker in one or multiple areas. This allows you to either choose a Council wide deployment, or slowly build up your use of the system, section by section. The similar user interface and workflows also make it easy for staff who work in multiple areas or move job roles to maintain familiarity with the software they’re using.

Correspondence and complaint management

Caseworker provides an easy place to log all correspondence, and ensure it’s responded to. Everything is taken inside one system, whether you’re dealing with email or letters, meaning users don’t need to keep switching back and forth between other programmes - it’s all in one place.

Staff can track the progress of complaints and correspondence from start to finish, in a clear, chronological way. Meanwhile the automatic logging allows you to monitor outcomes and reveals real statistical insight into what your staff are doing, and what your customers care about.

FOI/SAR management

FOI and SAR teams need a system where all requests can be logged, information can be gathered and then responses sent out within the statutory time scale. Caseworker allows all of this to be done in the clearest and simplest possible way.

Users can quickly log requests and set automatic review dates to ensure nothing is missed. Even better, the colour coded highlighting of requests ensures that users can’t miss exactly what they need to do, and in what order. This allows you to be certain everything is being dealt with properly, and according to the statutory requirements.

Councillor casework and member support

Caseworker grew out of the work Elected Technologies did with national and regional elected representatives, and Councillors who work with these representatives quickly started requesting a product design for their work too.

Since then we have worked with hundreds of Councillors around the UK as organisations like City of Edinburgh Council, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the Great London Authority. We provide a platform for Councillors to manage the workload they get from their constituents, and for any support staff they have to work alongside them in one cloud based system.

Why Caseworker?

There are a huge number of reasons to partner with Elected Technologies to use Caseworker as your cloud software provider to achieve transformation in your organisation.

One reason is that, because of our small business attitude, we’re able to work with you to deliver the system as quickly as you want. While we have the dedication to partner with you at every step of the way to ensure that the software matchers our users needs, and is perfectly suited to the way they work - we can still turn around projects in a matter of weeks from first discussions to go live. If you want to move fast and get a wider digital transformation project off to a quick start, with high profile early wins, then we’re your ideal partner.

Because we’re experts at providing cloud services in a political market, where individual budgets are low, we have an unmatched ability to provide the high quality services required while keeping costs down. In addition with our per user pricing you’ll always know exactly what you’re paying for. You only need to pay what you need to use, and it’s easy to upscale or downgrade your number of users either on renewal or even mid year.

While we provide the speed and pricing of an off the shelf product, Caseworker maintains a high level of customizability too. That means we can accurately reflect the exact terminology and categorisation requirements of each organisation and the separate teams within that organisation. This leads to the workflows making sense to the users who need to make use of the system on a daily basis - encouraging uptake and minimising change. We recognise that every team is different, so we work to your requirements wherever possible, rather than forcing from outside.

Find out more

If you want to find out more about how Elected Technologies can help you achieve your digital transformation goals as an organisation then why not get in touch to discuss what we can do?

Caseworker in Canada

Mon, 12 Aug 2019 12:13:00 GMT

We're excited to announce that in the coming months Elected Technologies will be launching Caseworker in Canada!

In just a couple of years, Caseworker quickly became the market dominant correspondence and casework management software in UK politics - and we're growing fast in Australia and New Zealand too! We're proud of our track record of delivery of providing reliable, helpful, easy-to-use software to elected representatives in regional and national Parliaments around the world. But we also know that we've got to this position by listening to what our users are saying.

That's why we're currently undertaking a series of surveys with the offices of various elected representative's offices in Canada. We want to make sure that we fully understand the needs of our future Canadian clients, and the Caseworker system is perfect for them.

If you're based in Canada and would like to learn more about what Caseworker could do for you, please get in touch with our team today by sending us a quick email . We'll be more than happy to help out!

What can Caseworker do for PCCs?

Wed, 12 Jun 2019 09:40:00 GMT

Caseworker is the system used by almost 65% of UK MPs, and many other elected representatives around the UK, to manage their casework and correspondence. Our products are now also utilised by Councils around the UK and increasingly, Police and Crime Commissioners. So why are more and more PCCs making use of Caseworker?

Data

In the modern world data has never been more important. You need to know who is interested in what, and where issues are cropping up in your region.

With Caseworker, each time a constituent contacts you with a question about policy or asking for assistance with an issue, all the data will be automatically generated in the system. Because of this you can filter cases by whatever terms you wish, or just make use of auto-generated stats to understand exactly what is concerning your constituents.

Many PCCs cover large geographic areas, containing many different towns and villages, or just varied parts of entire cities. With Caseworker you'll see all of your interactions logged onto our cases map, letting you know exactly which areas are contacting you about which issues - giving you valuable insight into the priorities of different areas. The map can also be filtered by 'case types', policy areas that you select for your own system as part of the set up process.

Personalisation

The personalisation that you can achieve with Caseworker is another area where the system really delivers for PCCs. You're not forced into any categorisation or way of working.

Control

Finally, Caseworker provides you with an accurate, reliable and easy to use system to help you track everything that comes through your office. It gives you with the control of knowing you're providing the best possible service to everyone who contacts you.

The system enables your users to not just monitor the progress of issues and enquiries to keep things moving forward, but also to set review reminders to ensure nothing gets missed, and everything is followed up.

Experience

Caseworker can do all of this, and more. After all, Elected Technologies has unrivaled experience of delivering software for elected representatives around the UK, at all levels. That's why PCCs around the country are already using Caseworker. So, why not have a chat with our team today to find out what we can do for you?

How Caseworker Helps New Councillors

Sun, 19 May 2019 10:20:00 GMT

Being elected as a new Councillor is exciting, but it can also seem a little bit daunting! You're in a new role, and there's no how to guide for being a good Councillor, or how to properly represent your constituents.

You'll soon find your constituents getting in touch, asking for help or just seeking a response on a variety of issues. Whether they're stopping you in the street, sending an email, coming to an advice surgery or phoning you up, they all want to be looked after professionally and properly. It can be overwhelming, particularly if this is all new to you!

Every Council has different ways of supporting their Councillors, and helping them deal with the requests for help that have started coming to you by phone, email and letter. However, the best way of keeping on top of your work is with Caseworker.gov. The Caseworker system is trusted by almost two thirds of UK MPs, and Councillors around the country, to keep them on track and deliver real insight into what's going on in their local area.

Caseworker helps you in so many ways, and luckily we have a few blog posts that will help you understand how. Firstly, Caseworker improves and enhances your engagement with your constituents . We help you communicate in the most efficient way, deliver on the basics and enable you to work more proactively too.

Caseworker also allows you to keep on top of everything , by delivering useful reminders about work you need to do, or replies you need to chase. You'll always know exactly what's going on with each case, what you need to do next, and when you need to do it.

And because you're doing all of your work in one place, not only do you know exactly where everything is, but you can start getting real insight into the work you're doing . With helpful stats being automatically generated you know exactly what the priorities of your residents are, and what you can do to help.

So although this might seem like a daunting time, Caseworker can really help! Just get in contact with our team today to find out more.

How Caseworker helps you know what's going on in your area

Tue, 05 Mar 2019 16:03:00 GMT

Caseworker does so many things for you - including keeping Councillors on top of their workload , and enhancing their engagement with constituents . But the system also allows you to gain automatic insight into what’s really going on in your area.

Because Caseworker allows you to log everything all in one place, in the simplest way possible, the system can automatically present you with all sorts of information about the issues your constituents care about. This can then be vitally important in influencing your work in the local community.

The system provides a number of tools to give you insights into your cases. The first is our cases map. Each time you log a new case on a constituent, a new pin will be placed onto your map. You can then see at a glance which areas are providing you with the most cases. Even better, you can filter the map by case type to look more specifically at what’s going on.

Another area Caseworker helps deliver insight is through the cases page. You can use this page to see all the cases you’ve created in a particular time period, about a particular issue, or any other combination of the filters were provide. You can either use this to look at cases within the system, or you can even export out all the relevant information to look at outside of Caseworker.

Finally, Caseworker creates some auto-generated statistics as you go about using the system. You can see an overview of the work you do, as well as having your most regularly tags flagged up to you and being presented with a breakdown of the cases you open by their type.

You can also change the time period that statistics are generated over so you can track changes and trends over time.

All of this means that you can carry on doing your job with Caseworker, while generating valuable information on what your constituents truly care about.

How Caseworker Keeps You on Top of Your Workload

Tue, 08 Jan 2019 15:07:00 GMT

We’ve talked previously about how Caseworker can enhance your engagement with your constituents - but did you know that we can also help you keep on top of your workload, giving you what you need to deliver real results.

Every Councillor knows that queries to Council officers can sometimes be missed or deadlines for a response can pass. But it’s hard to keep track of what needs to be chased and when, especially if everything has different timescales. That’s unless you use Caseworker!

With Caseworker, every time you take an action - like sending an email to a Council officer - the system will ask you if you’d like to set a review date. That means that you’re always reminded to set a review date to follow it up if you don’t get a reply in the meantime.

When you’ve set a review date, and that date comes around two things will happen. Firstly you’ll see that case as a priority ‘for action’ case on your home page, so it will be immediately visible to you when you log in to the system. Secondly, you can set a preference in the system for you to get automatic emails on the day your review date comes up.

You are then able to prioritise your workload, focusing on the most urgent cases first - while being effortlessly reminded of which cases are still outstanding. With these two features you can keep your constituents happy, and ensure you never forget to chase a response ever again, no matter how much work you have!