Wigan Council’s GenAI Journey with QuickAction & Agilisys

How Generative AI is unlocking productivity, innovation, and service transformation in local government

Overview

Wigan Council has pioneered the adoption of Generative AI (GenAI) through the QuickAction platform, realising significant productivity gains across a wide range of use cases.

With a longstanding partnership, Wigan and Agilisys began exploring the potential of GenAI in mid-2023. Just four months into implementation, QuickAction is already making a measurable difference—helping council teams boost efficiency, reduce admin burden, and drive innovation across departments.

QuickAction is a secure, public-sector-optimised GenAI process automation tool, designed to simplify everyday tasks, accelerate decision-making, and foster knowledge sharing across teams. From meeting preparation to data analysis, its versatility is helping Wigan Council reimagine how services are delivered.

This initiative is just one of many active GenAI projects in a growing innovation partnership between Wigan and Agilisys—focused on securely and responsibly transforming operations.

The Challenge

Like many councils, Wigan faced the challenge of delivering high-quality services with limited resources. Administrative processes were time-consuming and often inconsistent, creating inefficiencies that reduced the time staff could spend on higher-value work.

The council identified a wide range of opportunities to streamline operations—both citizen-facing and internal—using automation and AI.

QuickAction stood out as the ideal solution:

• Designed for public sector workflows

• Delivers standardised, one-click outputs

• Enables internal reference data to minimise hallucinations and ensure consistency

• Accelerates GenAI maturity by making everyday tasks faster and easier to share across teams
  

The Solution

Wigan Council launched a 3-month QuickAction pilot across its Strategy & Innovation and Adult Social Care directorates. Use cases spanned:

• Preparing meeting materials

• Automating minute-taking

• Analysing large sets of qualitative data
  

The Agilisys team worked hands-on with Wigan to onboard users, develop custom use cases, and provide training in prompt engineering to help staff get the most out of GenAI.

• The response was overwhelmingly positive:

• Over 100 council members adopted QuickAction

• New use cases emerged weekly

Staff across web, business support, and content teams integrated the tool into daily workflows

Meeting administration in particular saw significant gains. Structured, AI-generated outputs improved speed, accuracy, and compliance—freeing up time for more strategic work.

The Impact

During the pilot, Wigan and Agilisys calculated early returns:

• 400+ days of manual work saved annually in business administration alone

• Broader rollout plans already underway across Public Relations, Information Governance, and Children’s Social Care

• QuickAction is becoming a cornerstone in Wigan’s ambition to become a fully GenAI-enabled council

“QuickAction has catalysed a huge amount of excitement and enthusiasm here at Wigan. Working with Agilisys to develop and refine use cases has enhanced both service delivery and back-office operations—while also helping us uncover entirely new ways of working.”— Alison McKenzie-Folan, Chief Executive, Wigan Council

Looking Ahead

Agilisys CEO Andrew Mindenhall reflects on the partnership:

“Wigan Council is leading the way in harnessing GenAI’s potential in the public sector. They’ve shown how co-development, user-centric design, and outcome-focused innovation can drive meaningful change. We’re excited to continue building this innovation journey together.”

The QuickAction rollout demonstrates the power of Generative AI to:

• Reduce time spent on repetitive admin

• Improve consistency and compliance

• Unlock capacity without additional resources
  

Wigan’s success offers a roadmap for other councils looking to adopt AI securely, responsibly, and effectively.