Tanya Oliver of Kent County Council in Service Centre Discussion

Tanya Oliver, from Kent County Council, will be joining the G2010 discussion on Government Service Centres.

Tanya Oliver is Director of Strategic Development and Public Access at Kent County Council (KCC), within the Chief Executive’s Department.

Her career has taken her into the private sector, with experience in retail and franchising and for the last several years into the public sector in a variety of roles including economic development, sustainable business, communications and health and social care.  Tanya led the co-ordination of the restructuring of Kent County Council following the Children Act.  She also worked closely with the NHS during her time in Social Services, handling highly political issues and transforming the county’s performance in these areas.  Tanya also managed KCC’s Communication and Media Centre for seven months in 2008 during a period of significant change, modernising the way the council communicates and reducing communication costs across the Authority.

Tanya is a key lead for encouraging and managing innovation and transformation and leads on a number of strategic, cutting-edge, multi-agency developments and programmes around customer access and customer services, process redesign, graduate retention and creative industries, specifically around film and television.  Many of these programmes have received national & international media coverage and attention. Tanya has also focused on international partnerships and practices and is currently working on a public sector franchising innovation for public access.

Tanya is a member of the Chief Executive’s Management Team and is responsible for over 230 staff, including KCC’s Contact Kent call centre.  This includes Consumer Direct, which manages Trading Standards calls on behalf of the Office of Fair Trading for 74 local authorities in the south east of England.  She is the county lead on joining up access across the public sector in physical front-office locations and by telephone and web.  This includes 14 local government authorities, Kent Fire, Kent Police, 3 Primary Care Trusts, the voluntary sector and other public-funded bodies such as Business Link.  Kent is a pilot authority for “Total Place”, which Tanya is the Kent lead for.  She also leads on KCC’s office transformation programme, “Better work places”.

Whilst Tanya’s career has taken her into the private sector, her passion is for the public sector and in particular customer access and creative industries.