tonysmiththathousingitguy @HousingITguy

Some thoughts on IT and UK SocialHousing from a unique perspective of over 27+ years working with over 140 RSL's, Councils and social landlord groups in the UK, Ireland & Australia. (c) No reproduction without prior/express permission Available for independent housing RSL implementation, procurement of HMS, Repairs, CRM, EDM, DLO, Financial, Scheduling systems, critical friend etc. In Scotland I work with the folks at Arneil Johnston Check us out on Soundcloud /housingitguy

Friday, 23 December 2022

What's the Measure of a Man?

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @HousingITguy or LinkedIn here https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy

Just about at the closing of 2022, it feels a little for Social Housing, like the closing of 2017. Back then there was fevered preparation and anticipation of GDPR rolling in the following May. The anticipation now is more around the new TSM’s. These are the new Tenant Satisfaction Measures following a consultation earlier in 2022.

From 1st April 2023, all SocialHousing providers will need to start collecting data for tenant satisfaction measures on areas such as repairs, safety checks and complaints. Will the April 1st deadline make fools of many housing providers or will it all be ok? After all, most providers already would be expected to collate satisfaction feedback on initial proposed themes of repair, building safety and complaint handling. Goodness knows that many, particularly bigger ones in the sector need to be taking satisfaction seriously and acting on it constantly.

TSMs will be used alongside other tools to further scrutinise landlords, interactions (like repairs, gas servicing, compliance and dealing with ASB & complaints) with all their residents. Rather than a rod to beat landlords, I believe it may at last give an opportunity for all, particularly larger ones, to learn from issues.

After fairly extensive consultation the basic five themes have expanded now into 22 new measures, around five main themes, repairs, building safety, effective complaint-handling, respectful and helpful tenant engagement, and responsible neighbourhood management. These will be drawn from tenant surveys and landlord data (such as for the Decent Homes Standard).

There is a key split between Landlords of up to 1,000 homes and 1,000 and over. The latter have to supply stats annually, where smaller landlords can spread responses over up to two years. Also, bigger providers are allowed to sample survey and extrapolate. Surveys can be fulfilled by post, by phone, face to face or online, to meet resident needs. Demographics of people surveyed, must be very similar to those housed.

Importantly, when they publish their tenant satisfaction measures results, landlords will also have to report how they carried out their tenant perception survey, including how many responses they had and any other issues that may affect the results. An atmosphere of openness is crucial.

All of the current background to the TSMs can be found on the Housing Regulators page here

A guide for tenants has also been created for the Regulator For Social Housing. In its 32pt font, I find the guide less of an ‘Easy Read’ and perhaps too ‘dumbed down’ personally. I accept it must have been done in good faith, well meaning to meet established standards to reach all tenants.

While I am all for cutting out the jargon, social housing tenants are not stupid in my experience and should never in my opinion be treated as such. Access the guide here

Here to help set the scene, are the raw TSMs :-

Overall satisfaction

1. Overall satisfaction with the service provided by the landlord. Measured by: tenant perception survey

Keeping properties in good repair

2. Satisfaction with repairs. Measured by: tenant perception survey
3. Satisfaction with time taken to complete most recent repair. Measured by: tenant perception survey
4. Satisfaction that the home is well-maintained. Measured by: tenant perception survey
5. Homes that do not meet the Decent Homes Standard. Measured by: landlords’ management information
6. Repairs completed within target timescale. Measured by: landlords’ management information

Maintaining building safety

7. Satisfaction that the home is safe. Measured by: tenant perception survey

Safety checks

8. Gas safety checks. Measured by: landlords’ management information
9. Fire safety checks. Measured by: landlords’ management information
10. Asbestos safety checks. Measured by: landlords’ management information
11. Water safety checks. Measured by: landlords’ management information
12. Lift safety checks. Measured by: landlords’ management information

Respectful and helpful engagement

13. Satisfaction that the landlord listens to tenant views and acts upon them. Measured by: tenant perception survey
14. Satisfaction that the landlord keeps tenants informed about things that matter to them. Measured by: tenant perception survey
15. Agreement that the landlord treats tenants fairly and with respect. Measured by: tenant perception survey

Effective handling of complaints

16. Satisfaction with the landlord’s approach to handling of complaints. Measured by: tenant perception survey
17. Complaints relative to the size of the landlord. Measured by: landlords’ management information
18. Complaints responded to within Complaint Handling Code timescales. Measured by: landlords’ management information

Responsible neighbourhood management

19. Satisfaction that the landlord keeps communal areas clean and well-maintained. Measured by: tenant perception survey
20. Satisfaction that the landlord makes a positive contribution to neighbourhoods. Measured by: tenant perception survey
21. Satisfaction with the landlord’s approach to handling anti-social behaviour. Measured by: tenant perception survey
22. Anti-social behaviour cases relative to the size of the landlord. Measured by: landlords’ management information

IMHO, most providers with recent and well integrated Housing Management Solutions, should have little difficulty meeting the challenge of collating and managing this data. This presupposes ASB case and Asset management, including Decent Homes reporting is already in place. Most package solutions allow the facility to issue satisfaction surveys, campaigns etc, either in bulk, randomly or on demand, sometimes utilising workflow. This may not be a module/features already in use, but could easily be purchased/implemented before April 2023.

In-built self-service features are very useful where satisfaction surveys can be quickly issued, responded to by existing self-service users. Landlords should check these are available, lobby suppliers for them, or make them available. Clearly good take-up is key for tenants who can and are willing to interact on-line. For those who can’t or wont, an omni-channel approach is essential.

Joined up thinking and integrated systems these days can also be well achieved using an umbrella CRM, such as Microsoft Dynamics D365, Netcall, Salesforce or others. In particular, these CRMs often have features easy to implement or enable, at additional minimal cost. One example is the Microsoft Customer Voice (MSCV), in Microsoft Dynamics 365, essentially Forms Pro with some Go-Faster stripes. This approach keeps garnering satisfaction data within the ‘curtilage’ of existing integration, so everything can be managed together.

Applications that have capabilities to ‘bolt into’ existing integrated solutions and databases, would be my next consideration. There is great automation out there from the likes of Voicescape and others, which can allow use of Cloud data received and tie up with core contact and asset repairs data.

Last on my recommendations are totally isolated solutions that have just cropped up to solve this particular new social housing requirement. This always happens, it did with ASB, complaints and Decent Homes before, although you should expect anything these days to be all in the Cloud. Two things to consider on this, are integration prospects and how flexible the solution was based on its original source.

For integration, don’t get wrapped up in the ‘deer park rutting’ of struggling to integrate. Make integration part of the sale, or a guarantee to integrate with a contract penalty. That often seperates the men from the boys, or the women from the girls. Secondly, ensure if any new solution is already in use (& it might not be!) and live, compare carefully that site with yours. Consider the practicalities and the gaps between what you need and what’s available. There is also safety in numbers, remember its less painful to come in later, after pioneers have worked hard and frustratingly, with all the arrows in their backs!

As with any systems or applications, be sure to ask the right questions and not be comprehensively fooled. If in doubt, ask someone, a Critical Friend or similar, to ask those questions confidently on your behalf.

Happy New Year, lets hope for a better one, and get yourself prepared for those TSM’s

If we at Acutance Consulting can help your organisation with customer service solutions,

please just get in touch, for a friendly chat over a brew & a macaroon ☕😋.

Catch the blog monthly archive at
https://soundcloud.com/housingitguy/

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I would be pleased to connect with you on LinkedIn - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy Message me with any issues or queries, you would like to be explored in this blog. We generally receive a couple of suggestions each month.

DeWolff - What's the Measure of a Man.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

Access a quick list of our Social Housing ICT blog posts here

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Saturday, 3 December 2022

Artificial

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @HousingITguy or LinkedIn here https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy

Its been out nearly a whole month at the time of writing this, since the latest chatbot on the block, has been available to play with.

In the past you may have read about a few other chatbots that have come unstuck. ChatGPT from Silicon Valley outfit OpenAI seems to be the first to pass 'The Nazi test'.

There are stories of A-Level & degree students knocking up essays and even I managed to knock up a great 300 word one on George Orwell, but it stopped short when asked about doing a 5,000 word one. Maybe you only get so much for free ?

We have been here before however….

Tay you might remember, was a chatbot developed by Microsoft in 2016 as an experiment in artificial intelligence and machine learning. It was designed to be a social media bot that could learn from and interact with users on platforms such as Twitter and Kik. It was designed to mimic the language and behaviour of a young adult and was programmed to respond to users in real-time. It was intended to be used as a way for users to have fun and engage with artificial intelligence in a playful manner. The more you chat with Tay, said Microsoft, the smarter it gets, learning to engage people through "casual and playful conversation."

Unfortunately in less than a single day, it had learned right-wing and Nazi principles directly from Twitter users interacting with it maliciously. Here’s a sample:

That kicked off quickly !

No at this point I can forgive Microsoft haters, that might just say, “What a typical MS schoolGates error”. Didn’t Microsoft do any real-world testing before releasing this cluster-f*** into the world, to last not quite just 15 hours? Most humans have filters to some degree, but raw AI? It’s a potential lawsuit waiting to happen. Which is probably why Alphabet/Google and others have been dabbling with this tech for many years, but are in no rush seemingly as yet to release it

Alan Mathison Turing Statue, Sackville Gardens Manchester - RFF5JN

Also, as I discovered, the current incarnation of ChatGPT and the way it serves up responses, might well seriously disrupt the ads first way Google works to turn its dollar.

Do I think it passes the mathematician Alan Turing test? Well, it comes close!

The currently available incarnation has certain limits, however returns results in a believable natural language (whichever language you happen to speak):

Oh la la 👍

It’s a fun utility to play with, if you have (too much) time on your hands

Well I am happy with that

You can even ask it for code snippets, including SQL statements, Javascript, C++, VB, SalesForce APEX, SAP ABAP, old skool COBOL and PERL. I tested out a few languages I have worked with in the past.

A lot of the examples are accurate and very close to believable answers. Give some of these a try yourself. Once signed up and verified, you will be asking crazy questions within three minutes.

Need any relationship advice 😉

Just taking the above (totally fictional I assure you!) example into account, I think The Sun's, Dear Deirdre column writer, could be in trouble!

Here’s a response to a professional question, I am often asked in my working life:

Suppliers, do you recognise yourselves in there ?

This is all very readable and believable, however in relation to the question asked, I would only score this answer slightly under 40%. I know to interpret the answer in that way and even the broadly correct parts, do not reflect that Northgate has been NEC for over a year, as has Orchard been part of MRI for longer than that and branded so. Core housing above looks to refer to eCORE reporting

After an hour of working with ChatGPT you like me, will trust it a lot, although I know that at times reliability is not always greater than 90%. We definitely need to question everything AI serves up, just as any of us might be questioned in our day-to-day job roles. It could be quite easy to act totally innocently on the results being served up, although without verification in the real world, serious mistakes could be made.

ChatGPT is very limited. No outside access to the internet, trained by humans its claimed. Its "good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness", is how one tweeter described it. This is quite accurate for the moment I feel.

Maybe replacing expensive ICT staff and experienced consultants, is not totally practical at the moment for SocialHousing ICT🤔. However this is useful, although clearly currently the chatbot does not have access to wider weblinks and very much has relied on (truthful humans?) helping to shape content and truthfulness. Clearly this is a more expensive option than just trawling and scraping the web for all kinds of content. A bit like the initial aim of Yahoo.

You will also notice that ads and weblinks are not being served up. Google has conditioned us to wade though ads and find our own best quality links. When we click on an ad, Google earns its 50p or whatever that click is priced at. Searching using ChatGPT frees the user from a lot of that chaff. However, its inherent risk of incorrect or misleading info, needs to be taken into account at all times.

OpenAi currently are slightly immune currently from the types of media storms that might result if say Google, Amazon or Meta released a new chatbot, making mistakes, spreading conspiracy theories or untruths. This would most likely be a major issue and hence I think why they are holding back currently. Also of course, how is this best monetised?

Clearly at some point, openAI who have had incredible investment so far, need to properly monetise this too. We are at the start of a journey here, expect the mainstream chatbots to come and new applications to come out of it. Embrace it when they come, however also consider the risks, commercially and reputationally.

If we at Acutance Consulting can help your organisation with customer service solutions,

please just get in touch, for a friendly chat over a brew & some Chocolate Gingers ☕😋.