OpenSky, the automation specialists for government organisations and large private enterprises is supporting the effort to promote choice, increase engagement and improve transparency for social housing applicants in Ireland.
Social housing allocation presents a challenge for local authorities in providing a fair and transparent system with clear supply/demand information available to housing applicants to manage expectations of their housing applications through the CBL scheme.
OpenSky′s Choice Based Lettings platform was specifically developed to help local authorities efficiently manage the CBL scheme where housing applicants can manage the application process through a self-service portal.
The platform enables social housing applicants to view and apply/bid for available social properties. It plays a vital role in reducing refusal rates by housing applicants as they are given the tools to choose the specific social housing criteria to meet their precise needs – before expressing their interest and making a bid.
The CBL Platform is now being used by 20% of councils in the country including Cork City Council, Galway City Council, Louth County Council, Clare County Council, Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, and Cork County Council. To date, there have been 2.6m public logins, 3.2m property views and 690,000 expressions of interest made on the platform by social housing applicants.
Joseph Kane, Customer Success Manager at OpenSky, said: “Following OpenSky’s survey last year which revealed that 77% of Irish Citizens would like to see more automation in public services, we know there is a public appetite for more digital solutions like this. The key benefit achieved by Local Authorities using the platform, is their ability to win back time as a result of citizen self-service portal – a little more time is something we all need and should embrace the tech that supplies it.
The solution that we have developed, has already proven effective for the councils using it, by speeding up the letting time process and it has the potential to do the same for other Irish councils. OpenSky are on a continued path of pioneering new solutions that provide real benefits to Irish citizens through development of solutions for Government agencies – supporting a digital government and a safer nation.”
