OMR helps council to collect data on vandalism
The City of Glasgow Council is using an optical
mark reader (OMR) from Kendata
Peripherals to enable it to collect data about acts of vandalism
at thousands of buildings in and around Glasgow.
By eliminating the need for keyboard data entry, the OMR has
cut the costs of an ongoing vandalism survey and allowed staff
to be redeployed on to more productive tasks.
Originally started by the Department of Architectural and
Related Services (DARS) of the now dissolved Strathclyde Regional
Council, the vandalism survey covers some 15,000 properties,
of which about 2000 are major buildings with a 'proactive' maintenance
schedule - for example, schools, fire stations and police stations.
A further 3000 are smaller buildings designated 'reactive', and
the remaining 10,000 are very small properties often located
in rural areas.
"Given the number of properties involved, data collection
has been a difficult task in the past because it's all been done
manually," commented Andrew Lee, who was formerly employed
by DARS and is now with the Property Services Department of the
new City of Glasgow Council. "We looked at ways of making
the whole process more efficient and concluded that the best
approach would be to use an OMR for scanning information from
'multiple-choice' data-entry forms into a computer"
Working closely with Kendata Peripherals, DARS first came
up with a very user-friendly OMR form to collect data on vandalism
at the 2000 'reactive' properties. Designed to be filled in by
council staff such as school janitors, the form records details
of the type of vandalism, as well as where and when it occurred.
Bar code labels are attached to the form to identify both the
individual property and the council officer responsible for the
repair.
An automatic high-speed OMR, fitted with a bar-code read head,
is used to read marks and bar codes in the same pass. After the
forms have been scanned by the OMR, the data is entered into
an Access database and then disseminated to divisional managers
within the other new unitary authorities created out of Strathclyde
Regional Council.
"In the past, we only had subjective views of where vandalism
was most likely to occur; there was no actual statistical information
on which to base decisions," said Andrew Lee. "Now
we have been able to identify patterns of where vandalism is
higher and often people just didn't realise that they were high
cost areas."
The information also highlights areas where a change of design
might reduce the costs associated with vandalism.
A second form was subsequently developed for collecting vandalism
data from the 3000 'reactive' properties. Designed to be folded
and sealed, the form incorporates a reply-paid licence to make
it as easy as possible to send back.
The latest development has been the production of a 10-page
OMR booklet that has enabled staff to complete in six months
a comprehensive property condition survey of all 15,000 properties
to meet the requirements of European health and safety legislation
- a task that would previously have taken at least three years.
"We are now processing between 3000 and 5000 forms per
month," concluded Andrew Lee, "and we could not have
hoped to have carried out this volume of work without the OMR."
- ends -
26th June 1996 Ref. KE37/2
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