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Moving banks last year resulted in unforeseen issues that slowed down how income could be processed by the Council’s Income Management & Accounting team.

Trying to resolve the problem led to an ‘all hands on deck’ approach, as the team had to manually check additional documents to ensure the Council was able to accurately report within the correct financial period.

A solution had to be found and the team’s CAN, Carole Cowie, decided to organise a hackathon to help find a way to improve processes, reduce stress and speed up the time it took to update the Council’s ledger.

Carole, who now works within the Project Management Office, explains how a fix was found.

She said: “After the bank move there were changes to the way cash was being collected and where it was being counted. That meant we received new reports from our cash in transit provider that had to be manually reconciled to the bank statement, which considerably increased the time it took to process the income. We had to find a solution.

“By organising a hackathon I was able to bring together representatives from Income Management, the Project Management Office, the Improvement Team and Revenue & Benefits IT system support team. Thanks to that meeting an IT tool was identified that could provide an interim fix, amalgamating information from the bank and cash in transit provider  into a format we could quickly cross match with our internal records.

“The system saved a significant amount of time and stress and brought the reconciliation process back inline. The team still use the system for certain elements of their work, albeit a more tailored fix has been put in place for the banking side of things.

“Being a CAN helped me take the initiative to organise the hackathon, bringing together experts from across the Council to identify a solution that otherwise would have been missed.”

Want to find out more about being a CAN? Read the CANs' Charter and if you feel inspired drop an email to councilofthefuture@falkirk.gov.uk.

CAN event will also take place on Friday, June 21st to provide information on the Council’s five-year business plan and the role CANs could play in helping change happen.