Local government
Public space, run on evidence
A council is asked to keep public space safe, maintained and worth investing in. It usually has to do that with the cameras, sensors and networks it already owns, and a budget that has to be argued for line by line. Ericom works with what is already in the ground, turns what it sees into evidence a council can act on and defend, and stays to run it. The suite is called Civic Transform.
Three problems
Councils rarely arrive with a technology problem. They arrive with an asset nobody can account for, a funding case that cannot be evidenced, or an incident that exposed how long it takes to get the right footage to the right people.
Each of these is a different conversation with a different part of the council, and each one is a legitimate place to start.
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The cameras are there. Nobody knows how many still work.
Installed over years by different suppliers, recorded to servers and storage that cost money every month, and audited by walking up to them, on the occasions they are audited at all. The exposure only becomes visible when something needs to be reviewed and the footage is not there.
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The investment case has nothing underneath it.
How many people use the town centre, on which days, arriving how? Grant applications and capital cases are argued on estimates because nobody is counting, and the projects that would be easiest to justify are the ones that never get measured.
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An incident happens and the footage goes nowhere.
Getting relevant vision to Police is a process question before it is a technical one: who is permitted to release what, under which agreement, with what record of who has handled it. Without that settled in advance, it is settled under pressure.
These are three different problems belonging to three different parts of a council. A council can start at any one of them, and starting on one does not commit it to the others.
One place, three layers
A park is watched by cameras, run by lighting and irrigation controllers, complained about down the phone, and recorded in systems the council is obliged to keep secure. Today that is usually four suppliers giving four accounts of the same place, and nobody holding the whole picture.
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The place
Parks, town centres, pools, roads, halls and depots. What the council is actually responsible for, and what residents judge it on. Everything below exists to say something true about this.
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What reads it
Cameras interpreting what they see, sensors on fields and buildings, and the phone line a resident rings. Three different sources describing the same park. The field was watered, forty people used it on Saturday, two of them rang about the broken gate.
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What holds it up
The network those cameras and sensors depend on, the service desk behind it, and the security programme governing the records it all produces. This layer is invisible until it fails, at which point the two above it stop being true.
What Civic Transform is made of
Existing Ericom solutions, pointed at council work. Each keeps its own page, because a council buying one of these should read the same description as anybody else buying it. What makes them a suite is not a shared dashboard. It is one organisation accountable for all of them, on one network, under one security programme.
- Intelligent Video Analytics CivicVision. Software that interprets what a camera already sees. A bridge watched for flooding, footfall counted in a town centre, movement in a park after hours flagged while it is happening. It is a data capability, not CCTV, and it does not have to start at scale: one camera pointed at one question is a legitimate first deployment.
- Grounds and Facilities Management CivicPlay. Lighting, irrigation and bookings across fields, courts, parks and reserves, with sensors that raise the work order before a crew is sent out to find out whether there is one.
- Cloud Contact Centre CivicEngage. The number residents actually ring, and a record of what was asked and what was done about it that survives the person who took the call.
- Managed IT The network, the servers and the service desk underneath all of it, including the connectivity the cameras and sensors depend on. That is usually where the problem turns out to be.
- Essential Eight Council systems hold public records and, increasingly, obligations under the critical infrastructure rules. We align controls to the Essential Eight as the ASD words them, and report against them, so the position can be shown rather than asserted.
What we are in this
We are the integrator, not the manufacturer. We choose the platform that fits the council rather than the one we are contracted to move, we put the whole thing together, and the council holds one organisation accountable for whether it works.
The part that matters is what happens after it is installed. Systems like these fail quietly. A camera goes offline, a rule stops firing, a report nobody reads. We stay and operate it, onshore, so the capability is still working in year three.
Questions councils ask
Is this surveillance?
It is a fair question and it deserves a straight answer. Computer vision interprets what cameras see, so where it is pointed and what it is asked to look for are decisions with a community dimension, not just a technical one.
We settle it during scoping. What is being measured, what is retained, who can access it, and what the council is prepared to say publicly about all three. Privacy and compliance are designed in with a specialist partner. If a council does not have the community support for a deployment, that is a reason to change the scope, not a reason to press on.
Do we have to do the whole thing?
No, and most should not. A single camera can act as a sensor for one specific purpose. One bridge, one car park, one question a council needs answered. Starting small is a real deployment, not a trial. Scale is something the result earns, not something the contract assumes.
What does starting actually look like?
A discovery session with whoever owns the problem. What it uncovers decides the next step, and there is no fixed order: sometimes it is a privacy and compliance engagement, sometimes a site visit and a review of what is already installed, sometimes a demonstration, sometimes a small proof of value on one site. We would rather find out which of those is right than sell the same first step to every council.
Can vision be provided to Police?
Yes, and it is mostly a process question. It needs an agreement about what may be released and by whom, the platform configured so access has to be granted, and a record of who has handled a piece of footage and when. We stand that up as part of the deployment, because it is very difficult to assemble during an incident.
Are we buying into one vendor?
No. We select from several video and analytics platforms based on what a council already owns and what it is trying to do. The work we do that is hard to replace is the integration, the use-case design and the ongoing operation, not a licence resale. We have no reason to steer a council onto a platform that does not suit it.
Start with one problem
Tell us which of the three you are carrying and we will work out what the right first step is, including whether there is one.
Talk to us