Cabinet Office Chief Information Officer

Transforming Scottish public services

The Scottish Executive is working to create a more successful country by focusing the resources of government on increasing sustainable growth and helping Scottish people to flourish. This will involve a clearer and simplified public sector, freeing up more resources for vital front line services and ensuring value for money for the Scottish taxpayer.

The Scottish Executive is committed to working with local government and the wider public sector to transform Scotland's public services.

Vision for transforming public services:
• smaller government, with more of the money spent on frontline services.
• seamless public services – joining up to deliver for business and for citizens.
• transparent technology and business processes – respecting the privacy of the individual and avoiding big centralised databases.
• efficient services for Scotland, making maximum use of existing investments – avoiding duplication and waste.

Customer First
Laying the foundations for a transformation of the delivery of public services in Scotland, Customer First is a major infrastructure project being developed in partnership with all 32 Local Authorities, and managed by the Improvement Service, to give personal accounts to people from which they can manage their public services.

People opt into the programme and choose whether they wish to have an account, what services they wish to manage from it and whether they wish to have a multi–purpose smartcard. There are four key programmes of work to deliver Customer First:

• National Infrastructure/Citizen Account’s – with network links across all 32 authorities this infrastructure hosts the basic citizen account data set for all Scottish citizens and the national gazetteer data set for all Scottish properties.
• National Gazetteer – a national property gazetteer that adheres to common agreed addressing standards (BS 7666) is available to the public sector.
• Customer Relationship Management – to improve the performance of handling citizen queries and service delivery, Scotland has developed: a common A–Z of local services; a nationally accredited training programme for customer services staff; a continuous improvement programme for councils; and procurement of a national customer relationship management service.
• National Entitlement Card – public service smartcards to give access to free bus travel for older people, those with disabilities and a range of services in the future for those citizens who wish to carry a multi–application card.

Information sharing via the eCare Framework
The eCare Framework enables information sharing between public sector agencies for the care and protection of citizens.

It will enable professionals in different agencies to share sensitive personal data, securely and electronically, but without introducing a large, centralised database. Professionals share the data in their individual agency systems only when there is a legal basis and a requirement for them to do so. Information is disclosed only with the explicit consent of the individual, unless a statutory duty of care allows for this to happen without consent.

eCare had been developed with local partners and is managed at local level by fourteen local data–sharing partnerships. The Western Isles and Ayrshire and Arran data sharing partnerships have begun early implementation of the Framework.

Improving procurement
The award winning eProcurement Scotl@nd (ePS) service is a business change management programme which is based on providing a common technical eProcurement platform that is available to all public bodies in Scotland. The service is managed by the Scottish Executive in collaboration with colleagues from across the public sector.

The service has been operational since 2002 with 92 public bodies having adopted the service in Central and Local government, the NHS and the Higher and Further Education Sector.

The service has delivered improvements in supplier payment performance and transactional processing, enabling efficiency savings to be identified and works closely with procurement colleagues as part of a larger programme of procurement reform in Scotland. Over £3bn of transactions have been processed through the service and its use continues to expand. In addition to transactional processing, the service also provides e–auctioning and e–tendering facilities and other ancilliary services.

Shared Services
Shared Services is a key element of Scotland’s efficiency agenda. The Scottish Executive’s policy aim is to support Shared Services opportunities that will deliver Scotland–wide solutions, for smaller simpler Government, which improves services to the customer.We have published a Shared Services Guidance Framework to provide public sector organisations and their partners with information and case study examples, to help them to make informed decisions when considering shared services options. In addition, we have a national shared services framework for Local Government across Scotland to ensure that all local authorities can benefit from the outcome of the pathfinder projects.

‘One Wales’ – a progressive agenda for Wales

Public service reform in Wales
As elsewhere in the UK, public services in Wales will increasingly be tested by slowing increases in public spending alongside rising expectations and demographic and social change. The challenge in Wales is increased by a more aged population, a legacy of poorer health and lower economic participation than other parts of the UK. The Welsh Assembly Government’s approach seeks to:

• promote much better joined–up, more accessible services which are increasingly designed by, and responsive to citizens and communities;
• address patchy performance;
• stimulate innovation and promote greater ambition; and
• promote collaboration, shared services and smarter procurement to maximise the use of resources.

This approach comprises three main elements: promoting the voice of the citizen, engaging leadership and creating an enabling environment.

Promoting the voice and influence of the citizen
Key ingredients here include:

• Capturing citizens’ views and experience of public services. Using this information to design, deliver and improve public services so that they respond to the needs of all citizens.
• Enabling citizens to access information and services in a way that meets their needs.
• Improving the quality of, and linkages between, systems of complaint and redress in public services.
• Increasing the opportunities for service users to be active participants in the service for example through the Expert Patient Programme and chronic disease management.
• Establishing, promoting and publicising national standards so that citizens know what they should expect.
• Improving public accountability by testing the extent to which citizen focus is integral to
  • public service organisations;
  • better, more–user friendly performance information; and
  • enhanced reporting on the state of public services.

Engaged Leadership
“Engaged Leadership” by the Assembly Government seeks to provide challenge and support for change while leaving room for local creativity and without transferring responsibility. It builds on the advantages of unitary local government with co–terminous (commissioning) Local Health Boards. It seeks to avoid large scale re–organisation, but makes significant changes in traditional working relationships with service providers and, not least, with local government.

The biggest change is the setting up of non–statutory local service boards at unitary authority area level. These comprise the leads from the key public service organisations including some non–devolved services. The boards’ role is to address key public service challenges and issues which are not being solved by, or which transcend statutory partnerships. They will use Wales Spatial Plan data to identify issues and take targeted action. Six boards have been established as pilots and a further 16 are being developed. Local delivery agreements with the Assembly Government will define the service change projects that each local service board is committed to.

Senior Assembly Government officials sit as members of the 22 boards to provide a key link to the Assembly Government about local delivery issues, make connections to relevant activity within Government and network to other boards.

Creating an enabling environment
This involves a range of action by the Assembly Government to promote efficiency and value for money, support service change and innovation, promote learning and culture change.

The key actions here include:
• Harmonising performance management frameworks for public services, to support collaboration and deal with potential conflicts and overlaps. Using review, audit and inspection services to support and promote joint working and learning.
• Programmes and agencies to provide practical support for innovation across public services.
• Supporting and building the capacity of managers to create better and more joined up services through training and exchange.
• Direct support for projects to reduce transactional costs, promote shared services and more efficient procurement.

Information on Northern Ireland can be found on www.ofmdfmni.gov.uk/ [External website]