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Service Transformation

Building better, more efficient transactional public services

Service Transformation has the dual focus of improving the quality of service people get when accessing transactional public services whilst at the same time substantially cutting the cost to the state of delivering them. Service Transformation work is largely delivered through two cross government bodies – the Contact Council and the new Delivery and Benefits Management Delivery Board.

There are four main strands of work to deliver this agenda -  

1. Implementation of the Service Transformation Agreement (STA) to streamline public service delivery
The main goals of the STA are:

• Cutting 50% of the total waste (“avoidable contact”) out of the delivery chain
• Rationalising and streamlining the channels through which people access public services (e.g. contact centres, face to face offices, websites)
• Enabling key exemplar projects, such as Tell Us Once

2.  Streamlining Delivery Public Value Programme (PVP)

A new PVP Review to be led by Cabinet Office, with support from HMT, focusing on how measurable improvements can be made to public sector delivery processes through more effective and efficient exploitation of web, telephony and face to face contact.

The Review will identify specific services and channels which have the potential to provide resource savings and an improved customer experience, and will focus in particular on three delivery models:

• Face to face rationalisation – a place based approach, closely linked to Total Place
• Simplification of access to services – a usage based approach (through, for example, the rationalisation of the over 50,000 current local/central government telephone numbers)
• Self service and automation – a forward looking approach, closely linked to Digital Britain

3. Digital Britain

As part of the delivery of the recommendations in the final Digital Britain Report, June 09, Cabinet Office has been charged with the development of a roadmap for the Digital Switchover of Public Services programme in 2012 to feed in to the overall BIS programme. This work requires an initial assessment of current “channel shift” activity across central departments and agreement of clear strategic goals for public sector service delivery in the new Digital age. This work also has considerable scope for the realisation of large-scale efficiencies. 

Key milestones:

• August 09 - Cabinet Office publication of Channel Strategy Guidance for Government (done)
• March 2010 – Interim Switchover ‘Road Map’ and individual departmental channel strategies
• June 10 - Prototype complete Performance Management Framework (PMF) for assessing, through hard metrics, the performance and optimisation of government’s major delivery channels (will cover contact centres, face to face and web)
• June 2011 -  Reporting on pilot outcomes and how these will contribute to overall Switchover programme
• December 2011 – Finalisation of the Digital Switchover of public services programme for 2012

4. Benefits Management

Benefits Realisation is a new, challenging area of work for government which seeks to ensure that effective cross-government arrangements are established to manage the realisation of the benefits – both planned and emergent – of frontline business transformation.

Our vision is to create a Centre of Excellence that promotes cross government collaboration and good practice benefit management techniques and processes to drive forward and capture ST benefits across the public sector.

The Cabinet Office Service Transformation team will engage with government departments and facilitate the use of best practice benefits management approaches to ensure benefits are captured and realised using a consistent framework.

Contacts

Deputy Director, Service Transformation
Sarah Fogden

General enquiries:
Carolyn Cho
020 7276 1628