ESB Elected Members Enquiries
ESB Elected Members Enquiries system is a cloud software service that readily and effectively meets all the requirements for managing councillor enquiries across the organisation, from initiating the enquiry through our intuitive and simple online form through to case resolution via back-office.
Features
- Case management functionality
- Automated workflow through the organisation
- Mobile client capability
- Real time notifications
- Offline capability
- Provides single integrated view of enquiry
- Comprehensive reporting and analysis of interactions
- Data management module for GDPR compliance
- Constituents can raise enquiries with their members directly online
Benefits
- Gives councillors a single point of contact for their enquiries
- Ability for constituents to log enquiries online
- Can be tailored to your organisation
- Enables a councillor to act on behalf of a citizen
- Delivers a positive mobile experience
Pricing
£5,995.00 an instance a year
Service documents
Request an accessible format
Framework
G-Cloud 13
Service ID
1 3 9 9 6 1 3 3 7 7 2 4 9 5 9
Contact
Pentagull Ltd
Stuart Gilbert
Telephone: 0845 680 7147
Email: sales@pentagull.co.uk
Service scope
- Software add-on or extension
- No
- Cloud deployment model
- Public cloud
- Service constraints
-
Maintenance Windows:- Maintenance windows for regular maintenance and product updates are always scheduled outside normal working hours.
We aim to give at least 48 hours’ notice of any planned maintenance work that we intend to undertake.
Product Schedules:- Product roadmap and related information is available on request. - System requirements
-
- Supported web-browsers
- Working LAN, firewall and internet connectivity
User support
- Email or online ticketing support
- Email or online ticketing
- Support response times
-
Each support issue will be raised as a ‘ticket’ on our help desk system and the appropriate resolution will be scheduled and communicated to the client. Our service desk is staffed by knowledgeable staff providing first level support, this is backed up by unrestricted access to our second and third level support provided by our experienced consultancy and development teams.
Priority A: 1 hour.
Priority B: 4 hours.
Priority C: 1 day.
By agreement for weekends and bank holidays. - User can manage status and priority of support tickets
- Yes
- Online ticketing support accessibility
- WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
- Phone support
- Yes
- Phone support availability
- 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
- Web chat support
- No
- Onsite support
- Yes, at extra cost
- Support levels
- Support is standard and included within the licence charge. All customers benefit from the same excellent level of support. Each customer will be provided with a dedicated Account Manager and full access to support channels.
- Support available to third parties
- Yes
Onboarding and offboarding
- Getting started
-
Pentagull will create a training plan based on evaluation of the functionality that has been specified within the ESB platform. We anticipate that there will be differing roles and responsibilities so this will be organised based on their individual tasks and access rights to the system. Pentagull will assess the numbers of users to be trained as well as the timeframe for rollout, based on this assessment we will select the most suitable delivery method. We have a variety of training methods:
• Individual training – one on one basis walking the user individually through the procedure of carrying out ordinary tasks
• Group training – as above but with multiple users
• Train the trainer – a more concentrated programme which accounts for the above but with the intention of permitting an individual to carry out internal training themselves.
• Classroom training – located at the offices of the client (with the tools to facilitate it) or at the office of Pentagull.
These training methods would be through a combination of onsite training, online training, and access to our extensive online documentation site. - Service documentation
- Yes
- Documentation formats
- End-of-contract data extraction
-
The service has in-built functionality to extract information in various formats available to the users.
Additionally if required we will provide a data extraction service tailored to the individual needs of the customer - End-of-contract process
- All client data returned to client.All client access deactivated.Relevant secure processes fully applied.Final invoice prepared.
Using the service
- Web browser interface
- Yes
- Supported browsers
-
- Microsoft Edge
- Firefox
- Chrome
- Safari
- Opera
- Application to install
- No
- Designed for use on mobile devices
- Yes
- Differences between the mobile and desktop service
- None
- Service interface
- Yes
- User support accessibility
- WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
- Description of service interface
- The service interface has been designed to be simple, consistent and as predictable as possible. We use common UI elements, have tried to avoid unnecessary ones and use concise language in our labels and messaging. Page layouts are consistent and structured based on importance, which helps draw attention to the most significant pieces of information. Our service interface communicates readily what’s happening, we use various UI elements to communicate status and next steps which can reduce frustration for users. We anticipate the end goals that our users bring, so we create the relevant defaults that reduce the burden for users.
- Accessibility standards
- WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
- Accessibility testing
- Use of accessibility tools such as JAWS have been tested for use with browser form UI. Labels and field content have been verified for speech output. We also utilise the WAVE suite of evaluation tools to ensure our content is accessible for people with disabilities.
- API
- No
- Customisation available
- Yes
- Description of customisation
- The ESB platform provides the functionality to perform in-depth customisation straight out of the box. You can rename and add new fields and sections to your processes with ease. PDF templates can be created and amended to be automatically produced by the system along with bespoke email notifications for your staff or customers. Our in-built granular permission set allows for precise access changes to processes as staff and situations change without having to resort to contacting Pentagull thus ensuring you have control to deal with variations in the work. More experienced users can go even further and amend the rules that govern the automation for your processes. This allows you to continually make changes in the life-cycle of your process ensuring it remains fit for purpose and effective all without incurring any additional costs. All this customisation is available with no coding knowledge required, the platform is designed to be used by anyone with basic computer literacy and a few days training.
Scaling
- Independence of resources
-
A series of key performance metrics are constantly monitored, ranging from low level operating system counters to high level application layer metrics. This allows us to automatically respond to increases in demand by scaling up the resources allocated to the application before any impact is felt by end-users. By partnering with Amazon Web Services we are able to leverage the vast resources of their Elastic Compute Cloud
(EC2) to ensure that we can continually exceed our capacity requirements.
Analytics
- Service usage metrics
- Yes
- Metrics types
- As a web application our primary performance metric is the page response time. This is carefully monitored to ensure it stays within acceptable levels. In addition to the HTTP response metrics, a number of lower-level metrics are monitored to ensure the application stack remains healthy and responsive. These include CPU usage, memory usage and disk I/O metrics.
- Reporting types
- Reports on request
Resellers
- Supplier type
- Not a reseller
Staff security
- Staff security clearance
- Other security clearance
- Government security clearance
- Up to Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS)
Asset protection
- Knowledge of data storage and processing locations
- Yes
- Data storage and processing locations
- United Kingdom
- User control over data storage and processing locations
- Yes
- Datacentre security standards
- Managed by a third party
- Penetration testing frequency
- At least every 6 months
- Penetration testing approach
- ‘IT Health Check’ performed by a Tigerscheme qualified provider or a CREST-approved service provider
- Protecting data at rest
-
- Physical access control, complying with CSA CCM v3.0
- Encryption of all physical media
- Data sanitisation process
- Yes
- Data sanitisation type
- Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
- Equipment disposal approach
- Complying with a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v.30, CAS (Sanitisation) or ISO/IEC 27001
Data importing and exporting
- Data export approach
- A wide variety of formats and platforms are supported for secure data export
- Data export formats
- CSV
- Data import formats
- CSV
Data-in-transit protection
- Data protection between buyer and supplier networks
-
- TLS (version 1.2 or above)
- IPsec or TLS VPN gateway
- Data protection within supplier network
-
- TLS (version 1.2 or above)
- IPsec or TLS VPN gateway
Availability and resilience
- Guaranteed availability
-
Service Availability - 99.9% up-time per month
Service Availability - 24 hours per day (all days)
Response time for accessing screens - within 3 seconds (99% of the time)
Response time for system searches - within 5 seconds (97% of the time)
Pentagull will work with each of our customers on an individual basis to determine if a recompense model is required to meet the needs of the specific council or public department/ organisation. We strive to exceed, wherever possible, our SLA targets for service levels.
In the unlikely event of failure to meet our SLA targets we would invoke the agreed process which would award an appropriate level of service credits by way of compensation. - Approach to resilience
- Our service is hosted on infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services, who provide a monthly uptime percentage of 99.99%. To achieve maximum resiliency, we utilise all 3 AWS London data centres (known as Availability Zones) as either active or DR locations. This means that in the event of total data centre failure we are able to resume service using one or both of the alternate locations. Impacts to service delivery caused by more routine events such as server patching, server reboots and failure of individual components are mitigated through the use of load balancing and redundant storage. At the network level, AWS provides multiple carrier-independent feeds to each of its data centres.
- Outage reporting
-
Customer's are contacted directly by a member of the company.
Email alerts can be setup upon request from Pentagull monitoring tools.
The email alerts service is hosted using infrastructure that is totally independent from that which is used to host the service, ensuring that even a catastrophic failure of AWS infrastructure does not affect our ability to communicate with our customers.
Identity and authentication
- User authentication needed
- Yes
- User authentication
-
- 2-factor authentication
- Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)
- Username or password
- Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
-
Access is restricted to designated support staff at a level required for them to perform their role.
In terms of management interfaces there is an escalation process in place whereby senior staff can interface if required. - Access restriction testing frequency
- At least every 6 months
- Management access authentication
-
- 2-factor authentication
- Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)
- Username or password
Audit information for users
- Access to user activity audit information
- Users contact the support team to get audit information
- How long user audit data is stored for
- Between 6 months and 12 months
- Access to supplier activity audit information
- Users contact the support team to get audit information
- How long supplier audit data is stored for
- Between 6 months and 12 months
- How long system logs are stored for
- Between 6 months and 12 months
Standards and certifications
- ISO/IEC 27001 certification
- Yes
- Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001
- World Certification Services
- ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date
- 26/02/2020
- What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover
- There are no exclusions in Pentagull ISMS Statement of Applicability (Annex A) ISO 27001:2013 covers all aspects of Information Technology Security
- ISO 28000:2007 certification
- No
- CSA STAR certification
- No
- PCI certification
- No
- Cyber essentials
- Yes
- Cyber essentials plus
- No
- Other security certifications
- No
Security governance
- Named board-level person responsible for service security
- Yes
- Security governance certified
- Yes
- Security governance standards
- ISO/IEC 27001
- Information security policies and processes
- As part of our ISO27001 certification, Pentagull applies its comprehensive ISMS (Information Security Management System) throughout the Company. The ISMS manager reports all incidents directly to the board of directors. All policies which form part of the ISO 27001 system are applied to staff as part of their induction to the Company and their yearly reviews. Any policy changed outside this time frame is applied when required.
Operational security
- Configuration and change management standard
- Supplier-defined controls
- Configuration and change management approach
- Change control to our ESB platform’s core is managed through the practice of continuous integration (CI). Each build is tracked through formal version control process supported by a software version control system. Each new release has formal unit, integration, security and regression testing and is released into test environments before subsequently making into the live environment.
- Vulnerability management type
- Supplier-defined controls
- Vulnerability management approach
-
Our vulnerability management process is based on industry standards combined with advice from our own hardware/software suppliers. We regularly review our infrastructure to ensure we identify and categorise components based on risk/impact.
Patching is automated where it’s practical to do so, outside of this there we have a robust patch management procedure including a named individual responsible for patch management. All patches are applied within 7 days of release.
In order to keep abreast of the latest infrastructure threats we obtain information from multiple sources - our own hardware, software and infrastructure suppliers, additionally from a number of industry outlets. - Protective monitoring type
- Supplier-defined controls
- Protective monitoring approach
-
We employ proactive monitoring of various logs to detect unusual patterns of activity. This includes traffic and request patterns, authentication attempts and analysis of source IP addresses.
Our Incident Management System is used to manage and respond to any suspected compromise. This provides us with a structured way of handling potential security issues at each step of the investigation, and ensuring timely disclosure to our customers where appropriate. All suspected security incidents are investigated within 24 hours and co-ordinated by our Security Officer. - Incident management type
- Supplier-defined controls
- Incident management approach
-
Customers are able to report incidents using our support portal, this is logged directly into our support desk system with automated RAG categorisation and escalation of priority items.
Workflow within this system is also capable of routing specific problems or customers to an individual or team.
The teams also have access to a knowledge based system that enables for rapid diagnosis of problems.
We proactively monitor incidents on a regular basis to highlight any mitigation that we can put in place to reduce the likelihood of re-occurrence.
Secure development
- Approach to secure software development best practice
- Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v3.0)
Public sector networks
- Connection to public sector networks
- No
Social Value
- Fighting climate change
-
Fighting climate change
Pentagull recognises that the current climate crisis is the global community’s biggest challenge to date. No corner of the globe is immune from the devastating consequences of climate change and society needs to act now.
As part of our commitment to fighting climate change, Pentagull has net zero carbon plan in place that will ensure we will become carbon neutral by 2024. For more details on this please see our website. Subsequently any contract procured on this framework would be actively contributing to that commitment.
Additionally, as our software licensing model is not based on number of users and is delivered via a public cloud, this enables any organisation taking up this service the flexibility to have end-users working from home. This brings about a reduction in employees carbon footprint if they are not required to travel into the office. - Tackling economic inequality
-
Tackling economic inequality
As a micro business any contract procured through this framework would be contributing to helping Pentagull to grow.
It would also create employment opportunities for individuals in our local catchment area of Blackpool, which is one of the 20% most deprived districts/unitary authorities in England.
We are committed to training all our employees to a minimum of NVQ level 4 and have recently employed an apprentice and supported him to attain this level of qualification. - Wellbeing
-
Wellbeing
As our software licensing model is not based on number of users and is delivered via a public cloud, this enables any organisation taking up this service the flexibility to have end-users working from home. This brings about inherent advantages such as better work-life balance, increased motivation and greater flexibility which all contributes to employee wellbeing.
Pricing
- Price
- £5,995.00 an instance a year
- Discount for educational organisations
- No
- Free trial available
- No