Councils to lead drive for new jobs.

Councils must be 'fully focused' on providing job creation programmes said Local Government Minister John Healey and Employment Minister Tony McNulty in response to a key economic report.

Speaking on the same day as the latest unemployment statistics, the ministers asked councils to lead their communities through the downturn and spearhead bids for the £1bn Future Jobs Fund to create 150,000 new jobs.

Full article here

Government action to protect council taxpayers

Local Government Minister John Healey has today confirmed that the Government will take action to tackle excessive council tax increases set this year by two police authorities.

Click here for the full story

MP's Expenses:- Playing the rules or abuse of position?

As the row over MP's expenses floods every news bulletin and the first heads start to roll let us know your views by adding comments below.

OPENRevenues Blog Survey Results

Thank you to all who voted in our first "OPENRevenues Blog Survey"!
The question was:"What information would be useful on the OPENRevenues Blog?"

The results of votes cast were:
52% Product & Market Updates
27% OPENHousing "Tips & Tricks"
12% Events news
9% Customer comments and feedback

We will be making some changes to our future posts to reflect these results. The next survey question will be posted shortly

OPENRevenues - Module Focus: e-Benefits

Get more efficiency from your benefit service with our e-Benefits software solution:

As indentified in the article by Jon Gibbs mentioned on this blog below, the new e-transfer project will present new challenges for Benefits sections but our OPENRevenues e-Benefits product could be your solution.

How it works:
Allows Benefit application form data (LAID forms) to be captured from a variety of sources, (e.g. e-forms, welfare benefit systems etc) to be imported directly into the OPENRevenues core system, pre-populating the input screens. and applying intelligent business processing to cater for new claims, change of address, claim reinstatement and the editing of existing live claims.

e-Benefits highlights:
• E-forms reduce or eliminate printing costs
• Reduce postage costs
• Reduce time keying in data
• Improve NI 181 claim processing times
• Eliminate transposition errors on input

Request further details about our e-Benefits solution or contact your Account Manager and see how it can improve your service provision.

Look to the Future..

In an article first published in the latest version of our customer newsletter, OPEN-News, Jon Gibbs of IBS OPENSystems provides an insight into the forthcoming issues that will impact on Revenues and Benefits.

Please click here to read the article
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DWP Reports on Choices Package in Pathways to Work

The Department for Work and Pensions, has published its report exploring whether it was possible to estimate the impact of the Choices package in Jobcentre Plus Pathways.

Amongst the conclusions were that paritcipants in the Choices package were more likely than non-participants to be in paid work two years after the start of their claim.

Please click here for further details