The City of Hasselt -
Effective public service through effective IT training

Delivering effective service to 68,000 citizens every day is a challenging task. IT tools provide new ways for the Hasselt City Concil in Belgium to support the work, but also require knowledge and skills among users.

Hasselt saved time and money using testing

The City of Hasselt - The Capital of Limburg Province in Belgium

Hasselt is the fourth largest commercial city in Belgium, and the capital of the Flemish province of Limburg. The city has 68,000 inhabitants and mayor Steve Stevaert works with 200 employees in the City Council.

Hasselt is a member of the VVSG - de Vereniging van Vlaamse Steden en Gemeenten - the umbrella organisation for Flemish local authorities and OCMW's (Public Centres for social welfare) with over 60 000 employees in Belgium.

The Challenge - More Service at Lower Cost

As all cities and municipalities, Hasselt is faced with the challenge of offering an increasing number of services for its citizens. As a result, the use of various IT tools is increasing. However, not all employees in Hasselt City Council had sufficient knowledge to use the tools.

The knowledge gaps proved expensive. Support costs increased, the full value of investments in IT systems was not captured, and the pressure for employees having to use tools they did not fully master was unnecessarily high.

The Solution - Quality Knowledge Through Knowledge Measurment

Hasselt City Council chose Enlight as a provider of a complete online testing solution, including knowledge tests, online test delivery and application hosting.

The solution follows the T3C method - Test-Train-Test-Certify using pre-tests, post-tests and certification tests. The system provides real time statistics on the progress of testing. As the knowledge objective for its employees, the Hasselt City Council choose to standardise on the ECDL basic computer skills requirements.

Enlight was chosen for its experience with large scale testing solutions, reliability of services, and for the proven quality of its tests.

The Result - Quality Knowledge at Lower Cost

By measuring the knowledge of the employees before the training, 46% of the total training effort could be saved. 35% of the employees needed no training, 10% needed limited training, while only 45% required full training.

By offering the ECDL certification to its employees, all had the right incentives to complete the training program rapidly.

Due to the success of the Hasselt project, the whole VVSG chose to enter into a cooperation with Enlight to offer the services to the 300 cities and municipalities in the VVSG organisation. Further, Hasselt is preparing for using the now proven T3C methods for other training areas.