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The Government Car Service
Software Development
Davies & Robson were retained to develop a system for the control, co-ordination and efficient management of The Government Car Service (GCS). The GCS provide cars and drivers to Ministers and senior public officials and can be asked to do anything from supplying a highly secure car to arranging the transport logistics for international conference. Notice periods of car requirements vary from several days to a few minutes.
This high security, high profile project, resulted in “Phoenix”, a software package written by Davies & Robson. The system has been in operation for several years now, and during that time has undergone several major enhancements. The latest of these was undertaken in response to a problem GCS were experiencing in obtaining accurate address information from users booking vehicles. The development links address management software into Phoenix, giving the system access to 27 million addresses within the Royal Mail’s postcode address file. Address details can now easily be found from input of a postcode, street name, building details etc. The system even allows users to find addresses which ‘sound’ similar to the address entered! This development has had the double benefit of ensuring accurate address capture while further reducing the amount of data input required.
The Scottish Government Car Service (SGCS) also provides a fleet of cars and drivers for use by ministers of the Scottish Parliament. Following an invitation to tender, the Scottish Executive purchased Phoenix to carry out the management and control of this fleet.
After bespoking of the system in line with the SGCS’s requirements, implementation was completed smoothly on-site. Phoenix has greatly improved the process of job input, allocation and turnaround within the service; an additional benefit has been the easy access to management information about the workload, costs and overall performance of the service.
www.gcda.gov.uk
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