Product category:
Building Regulations and Accreditation
News Release from: Forestry Commission
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial
Team on 26 June 2007
Commissions war on paperwork takes top
honour
Forestry Commission's efforts to roll back the paperwork tide won it the Government to Business award in this year's prestigious Government Computing Awards for Innovation.
In doing so the Commission beat off some heavyweight competition in the Government to Business category - the runner-up was Jobcentre Plus, and the other finalists were the Small Business Service, and the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency The Government Computing Awards for Innovation are the United Kingdom's premier awards recognising the people and projects behind the best in public-sector technology
This article was originally published on Buildingtalk on 23 Jun 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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The Commission has been playing a full part in the Government's Better Regulation Action Plan, a cross-government programme for reducing the burden that regulation imposes on business.
It estimates that its proposals in this area will save its stakeholders some GBP375,000 a year.
However, Tim Rollinson, the Commission's Director-General, explained, "We are not stopping at the costs and burdens imposed by regulatory requirements alone, but we're also casting our net further afield to save ourselves and our stakeholders time and money by streamlining and simplifying business procedures as well".
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"So we have also considered what we might do for our customers and contractors, such as timber buyers and haulage contractors, who, although they're not affected by us in our regulatory role, nevertheless face administrative costs when they do business with us.
Our initial estimate is that our proposals will save these businesses GBP1.3 million a year, and an important early element of this programme is our e-Business for Forestry package.
"Timber is a globally traded commodity and its price is set by the world market, so British forest and timber industries are competing against imports from lower-cost economies".
"Therefore we need to be constantly innovating to stay competitive, and the Commission also has a duty to the taxpayer to achieve value for money".
"E-Business for Forestry helps us to achieve both of these objectives".
E-Business for Forestry is an integrated, three-part, electronic package that is revolutionising the sale and haulage of timber and the payment of contractors.
It is slashing transaction times and paperwork, reducing errors, increasing flexibility, and reining back on time-consuming travel.
The first component is electronic sales.
In the old days, timber sales were conducted by paper tenders or manual auctions.
Documents - often large - were printed, posted, filled in with a pen and posted back, in a process that could take several days to complete.
For auctions, Commission staff and prospective buyers would travel combined totals of, sometimes, hundreds of miles, spending their employers' time unproductively and contributing to pollution, congestion and climate change.
Now, most of it can be done without either party leaving the office, with hardly a sheet of paper being printed or posted.
Buyers receive automatic email notification of timber sales.
The parties can exchange all the necessary documents by email, or download them from the Internet.
The documents can be filled in on line, with the software minimising mistakes.
Finally, buyers can lodge their bids by e-mail, and successful bidders can extract all contract documentation electronically.
Almost the only aspect of the old system that remains is the need, sometimes, for buyers to travel to inspect the timber before the sale.
Both parties save time and money through the reductions in paper, printing, postage, travel and error correction.
So convincing are the benefits that, within two years of introducing e-sales in 2004, the Commission was conducting all its competitive sales in Scotland and Wales electronically, and up to 96% in England.
The second component is data exchange.
This uses the new Electronic Forest Industries Data Standards (eFIDS), which the Commission developed in consultation with customers, to standardise the electronic documents and formats in which business information is exchanged between forest businesses.
Traditionally, all exchange of information, such as proof of despatch, advice notes and sales and purchase invoices, were passed between the various businesses either on paper or by email in formats that could not be entered directly into recipients' IT system.
This meant that recipients of information had to rekey it into their own systems, incurring costs in time, money and error correction.
Exchanging data using eFIDS cuts out this duplication of effort.
Information exchanged between parties to a timber sale no longer has to be manually entered into recipients' systems; by using uniform document types and data formats across the industry, the data can go straight into them.
This enables rapid and efficient timber dispatching, invoicing and payment, and exchange of stock, loading and weights information, all with fewer errors.
By the end of 2006 the Commission was working towards processing more than 40% of dispatches using EFIDS, which are recognised by OASIS, the global organisation that guides the development of e-business standards.
And some of the Commission's first customers to adopt it are now introducing it to their customers.
Development of EFIDS has also enabled the Commission to begin introducing "self-billing" to pay its contractors, with time and cost savings for both parties.
Self billing works on the basis that, because the Commission already has all the information it needs to enable it to pay its contractors for work done, the contractors no longer need to generate invoices asking for payment.
The Commission simply generates a self-bill invoice, a copy of which is emailed to the contractor, followed by a payment directly into the contractor's bank account and a message telling him that the payment has been sent.
It hopes to expand electronic data exchange into these areas, although it acknowledges that many contractors are not yet geared up for it.
The third and newest part of the e-Business for Forestry package is dispatch authorisation by mobile phone, which has been trialled very successfully with a timber haulage company in West Argyll.
By keying into the Commission's dispatch systems from their mobile phones at any hour of the day, lorry drivers can automatically receive PIN numbers authorising them to uplift the logs that they or their employer is contracted to haul.
The system preserves timber security (i.e it makes it difficult for anyone with a lorry to fraudulently gain authorisation to uplift logs), while increasing the haulier's flexibility - previously drivers had to call the Commission during office hours.
It frees up Commission staff time, and requires relatively unsophisticated equipment - all the driver needs is a mobile phone.
E-Business for Forestry was also a finalist in three categories in the e-Government National Awards 2006.
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