The combination of postal strikes and Christmas have left Thanet District Council with a real headache.

Thousands of letters have failed to be returned and have had to be assumed lost in the postal system.

TDC are required to confirm that those people entitled to the single person's council tax reduction are indeed getting it and that those claiming it are still entitled. To do this they send out a simple form where respondents need only tick a box and sign the bottom.

Not a big deal you might think. However around 2,000 replies have failed to come back leaving TDC with the task of visiting each and every household in person just to collect a signature or post the form "by hand".

So while TDC employees truce the streets visiting 2,000 homes that the mail service have failed to keep connected over an important mater I suggest that it is clearly time that TDC took a long hard look at their use of communications technology and ask: "is there a better way?"

Yet what can they realistically do? It is not yet viable to replace the postal service unless TDC can find the funds to set up a Thanet Postal Service of equivalent social and business value to the Royal Mail. I can see no way that this could be achieved inside the sort of budget that TDC is capable of handling.

Could TDC employ a suit of tools that might lesson the impact and cost of another postal failure?

Most definitely.

Rather than just using their website to push press releases and hide information away TDC could easily use their web presence to allow the people of Thanet to carry out their business with the council easing the sort of pressure that saw the loss of library space in the diabolical effort that is called the "Gateway". Rather than ever increasing the scope and staff required to run these services much could be allowed to be carried out on line.

I doubt there is a significant bank remaining that does not now offer "Internet Banking Services" where some or all of the services available at a branch can be accessed from the comfort of the living room, bed room, or Internet cafe.

Why can TDC not likewise set up a simple set of API and web interfaces that would allow people to fill out and submit forms, make payments, request benefits, file evidences for said benefits and register enquires that would get a postal, email or telephone reply within a given time frame. After all a large part of the work carried out by front-line staff at the gateway appears to be the scanning and digital storing of forms. This could be simplified by just letting people fill out the forms digitally to start with.

Would this impact the current problems caused by the mail service?

Yes, it would lessen them it wouldn't make them go away but it would reduce the cost of paper, postage and then man hours spent wondering around Thanet collecting signatures that the mail-man should have been taking care of.

If the average Joe could log into his Council Tax account and see amount outstanding and make a payment, if he could see his last recorded information given and make changes a whole section of Thanet would not have been exposed tot he current problem in the first place. What is more TDC would save a good amount of money in the medium and long term from the reduced postage and printing requirements.

As a by-product of this TDC would be greener by default.

Having a single potential point of failure such as is found with the heavy reliance on the mail service is an unforgivable weakness in the communicational abilities of any sane organisation. Any business worth it's salt will be looking to make it as easy as humanly possible for customers and clients to give the business whatever it is the business wants from said clients and customers. Be that web, phone and mail payment options, contact methods or sign up options.

How well used could such a system become for TDC and what else might you suggest TDC could do to mitigate such problems in the future?