Solutions

Chipside is a specialist software development company providing products and services to around a quarter of local and regional government traffic authorities in the UK. This means that Chipside works with over 130 local government authorities throughout the UK, delivering smart city initiatives to villages, towns, cities and regions.

Chipside has developed a complex and comprehensive relationship with local authority parking operations outside London. The services the company delivers have been developed in consultation with its clients, who have seen their investment of faith and intelligence into Chipside repaid by a suite of products, systems and services that are continually evolving - back office notice processing, MiPermit cashless parking, etc. In addition, the network of councils benefits from a constant pricing mechanism and the knowledge that profits are reinvested into product development.

Chipside's systems and services are developed in-house and supported by a dedicated systems engineers.

Chipside deals with approximately a million unique contacts from the public through its own directly employed UK call centre. Chipside systems look after the parking needs of around 3.5 million residents.

Over 1,400 mobile devices provided by Chipside are used by local authority officers nationwide to manage on-street parking spaces, which are used by the public millions of times a year.

Besides supporting active patrols by law enforcement officers, Chipside systems can be integrated with enforcement systems that keep bus lanes open and free flowing, car-based systems to keep routes to school safe and to provide security of high profile events.

Chipside's case management systems enable local authorities' back office teams to review representations against penalties to ensure they are processed in accordance with the law and reference to council policies.

Some of the largest local government partnerships in the UK deploy Chipside's system to provide shared services across regional boundaries.

Chipside has created a new smart cities approach called Oppidatim, which harnesses the power of data to enhance the delivery and quality of public services.

Moorby says: "'Big Data' and 'Open Data' interfaces are delivered as standard to allow correct oversight of all operations. Chipside has links to in-house payment systems, statutory vehicle licence checks, court registration systems, independent adjudication services, citizen databases, property gazeteers and more.

"Oppidatim's ability to integrate with other local authority systems allows traffic and parking management operations to fully integrate with a truly smart and shared operation, whether at a community, town, city or regional level."

Sensitive enforcement

Chipside's state-of-the-art back office case management system allows a local authority to decide how to operate its parking monitoring policy. The hosted management system allows evidence to be collected and enables legal notices to be issued to the vehicle keeper.

Once a notice has been issued to the vehicle, to system progresses the case according to workflow requirements defined in local law. Back office teams are guided through the correct application of the law.

Paul Moorby, Managing Director of Chipside, says: "The system uses intelligent logic to provide case administrators with defined recommended decisions, actions, statutory documentation, letter templates, guides paragraphs and templates. All these elements are configured to ensure a high standard of communication is consistently applied across all similar cases."

Evidence can be collected to support any legal activity, including automatically linked photographs, videos and statements.

"Crucially, the software allows city planners to issue warnings, reminders and other documentation instead of formal penalty notices," says Moorby. "Sensitive, responsive enforcement can be applied when and where needed.

"The public is empowered too. Evidence can be reviewed by the vehicle owner online. The person concerned can then exercise their own legal rights to dispute the legal action by submitting their challenge and evidence online. Where data interchange is required, it is performed securely to government, agencies, to Courts and the independent adjudicators or oversight committees."

Connecting mobile workforces

Chipside software systems are designed to ensure that mobile law enforcement officers are guided through the various stages of issuing a legal notice to a vehicle.

"The choice of mobile computer device remains with the officer directly," says Chipside's Managing Director Paul Moorby. "Our systems work on a number of devices from internationally accredited manufacturers. Securely linking to the back office system using real-time connectivity, the officer can quickly see the vehicles that are authorised to park at the location, gathering data from a variety of sources - virtual permit systems, online payment, resident databases and more.

"If a vehicle is found to be infringing local policies, a printed legal notice can be issued to the vehicle and transmitted to the back office processing team together with evidence - photographs, videos and other information required to support the notice issued."

Local authorities can decide to issue more than penalty notices. Chipside's software can be configured to enable councils to issue warning notices, guidance notices, a request for payment of the parking fee or further information, such as suspension of an issued permit. All of the activity is recorded on a distinct case database in the back office system.

Further information on approved mobile devices is provided in the Chipside briefing note, the Mobile Computing Market Review.

Chipside's technology partners have a truly global reach