Driving Transformation: Wigan Council’s Journey with GenAI and QuickAction

Wigan Council has pioneered the adoption of Generative AI (GenAI) with Agilisys' QuickAction platform, realising significant productivity gains across several use cases. Early estimates indicate that QuickAction could save over 400 days of work annually in business administration alone.

Longstanding IT partners, Wigan Council and Agilisys began working together over the summer to explore the potential for GenAI to augment various ways of working within the local authority. Wigan Council has been using the Agilisys QuickAction solution for over four months now. Looking at ways to both enhance operational efficiency and productivity whilst also entirely reimagining certain services and systems, the innovation partners highlighted several areas suitable for GenAI augmentation and innovation.

QuickAction is a GenAI process optimisation solution that enables organisations to leverage GenAI across a range of tasks, thereby saving time, boosting productivity, and fostering knowledge sharing among users and teams. The deployment of QuickAction exemplifies one of many ongoing GenAI projects between Agilisys and Wigan Council. As innovation partners, they are deeply focused on leveraging GenAI technology to drive transformative change.

The Challenge & Solution

Wigan Council faced a common public sector challenge: delivering high-quality services efficiently while managing limited resources. The council sought innovative solutions to reduce administrative burdens, streamline processes, and enhance service consistency and output. Many use cases were identified across various service areas, both citizen-facing and internal.

QuickAction, a GenAI process optimisation tool, provides a secure environment tailored for seamless integration into public sector operations. Its unique features include organisation-specific functionality and standardised outputs, enabling swift and efficient task execution with just one click.

Unlike other GenAI process optimisation tools available for enterprise clients, QuickAction enables users to create internal data sets (‘reference data’) for each action performed. This means outputs are consistent across users, and the chance of hallucinations is greatly reduced. Standardised outputs enable rapid knowledge sharing, developing organisations’ GenAI maturity, and embedding innovation across their workforce.

The Implementation

Wigan Council identified trial use cases for a 3-month pilot of QuickAction across its Strategy & Innovation and Adult Social Care (ASC) directorates. These use cases varied from business administration – such as preparing materials for meetings or producing detailed minutes of meetings – to qualitative data analysis of large unstructured datasets. Agilisys worked closely with Wigan Council to onboard teams, further develop use cases, and upskill on prompt engineering to empower the council with GenAI capabilities.

The pilot far exceeded expectations, with over 100 council members adopting QuickAction across various domains, with new use cases being generated each week. While web and content teams have been leveraging QuickAction to personalise content ahead of publication.

Business support staff have been using the tool to overhaul meeting administration processes through structured outputs, minutes and actions. This broad uptake signifies QuickAction’s versatility and its potential to catalyse significant efficiency gains within the council.

The Impact & Future Plans

Work was carried out throughout the pilot to quantify potential savings from the use of QuickAction across the two directorates; early estimates indicate that QuickAction could save over 400 days of work annually in business administration alone. Encouraged by these results, Wigan plans to expand QuickAction’s application across additional teams, including Public Relations, Information Governance, and Children’s Social Care.

Wigan’s adoption of QuickAction represents a significant step toward becoming a fully GenAI-enabled organization. Their experience serves as a beacon for other local authorities aiming to harness GenAI’s power securely and effectively.

“QuickAction has catalysed a huge amount of excitement and enthusiasm for incorporating GenAI technology into our day-to-day here at Wigan Council. Working with the Agilisys team to identify, develop, and refine use cases has enabled our directorates to enhance service delivery, and back-office operations, and uncover entirely new ways of working as well. QuickAction is an important part of our journey to fully embracing the power of GenAI, and we’re excited for the road ahead with Agilisys as we expand to further teams and use cases.”

Alison McKenzie-Folan (Chief Executive, Wigan Council)

Closing Thoughts

Andrew Mindenhall, Agilisys CEO, says: “Wigan Council, as an innovation partner for Agilisys, are leading the way in capitalising on the significant opportunity that GenAI offers to the public sector. Early adopters of this new technology understand the importance of co-development, user-centric design, and outcomes-focused innovation – key pillars of our approach here at Agilisys. We’re looking forward to sharing more of our work as a result of our ongoing innovation partnership in the future and remain committed to helping councils like Wigan reimagine their ways of working and the services they offer by leveraging the power of GenAI technology.”

Wigan’s journey with Agilisys and QuickAction exemplifies how innovative partnerships and cutting-edge technology can redefine public sector operations, setting new benchmarks for efficiency and service quality. The ongoing success of the QuickAction solution is a testament to the need for a secure, easy-to-use GenAI environment that enables standardised output for rapid knowledge sharing and efficiency realisation.

To hear more about how Wigan Council has pioneered GenAI adoption through their innovation partnership with Agilisys, or learn more about the QuickAction solution, please get in touch at info@agilisys.co.uk. To get a free demo and discover our other GenAI products here.