The First Minister set out the challenges and opportunities facing Scotland over the next 20 years as part of his lecture in May at Stirling University about the Futures Project. The Futures Project aims to ensure that all the aspects of government activity work effectively together to best position Scotland for the future. We must ensure that our public services are able to cope with and respond to these challenges.
A discussion is currently underway across the public sector through the Executive’s Transforming Public Services: The Next Phase of Reform document. It seeks to provoke debate around the many aspects of reform, including geography, structures, processes, culture, people and legislation. The outcome of discussion is likely to be reported in early 2007.
A key strand of activity is being taken forward through the Customer First programme, which is sponsored by the Scottish Executive and is being developed in partnership with local authorities under the direction of the Improvement Service, with the support of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers. The core objective is to introduce business processes which will allow 75% of local authority delivered services to be delivered at the first point of contact – be that face-to-face, over the phone or across the internet.
Work is already underway through the Customer First programme to develop a secure and sustainable national data sharing infrastructure to support a citizen account and property gazetteer. This is designed to facilitate the take up of online, self-service transactions making services more convenient and more responsive to citizens’ needs.
The programme is already delivering real benefits to citizens in the way that services are delivered. An example is the voluntary national entitlement card which was launched across Scotland in April this year. The card has been rolled out to around one million elderly and disabled people and it provides them with free bus travel across Scotland.
The eCare Framework is another strand of activity which is helping to join up citizens health and social care information in a disciplined and accountable way so that practitioners and front line staff can deliver improved services to citizens. It provides an effective and efficient solution to the challenge of sharing personal data.
Shared services is also a key part of the Executive’s reform agenda. Scotland is a small country with about 200 public bodies, the value of each organisation having its own corporate support functions such as human resources, facilities and estates, finance and ICT needs to be carefully considered. We also see significant scope for standardisation and shared arrangements across many of the common operational processes and systems that underpin our front line services.
Our aim is to develop shared business support functions and common business processes that are more independent of the traditional structures and boundaries that exist within the public sector. This will allow us to achieve significant efficiency gains by freeing up resources across the whole public sector which can be ploughed back into improving customer service and frontline service delivery. It will allow public service delivery organisations to focus on service delivery to the citizen.
Our consultation on a national shared services strategy has recently closed. The process has allowed us to engage with stakeholders across the public and private sectors. Responses are helping us to further refine our plans so that we can develop a national strategy that will have the widest range of support.
Preparatory work is underway which will map the Scottish public sector’s ICT infrastructure. A scoping study is being undertaken to inform future policy decisions, identify potential areas of duplication and provide a base line from which future improvements to the public sector’s ICT infrastructure can be measured.
To support the drive towards a joined-up and shared infrastructure the Scottish Executive has published a revised Openscotland Information Age Framework (OSIAF). The OSIAF sets out standards, specifications and guidance for the public sector and it provides a Scottish framework for developing and approving interoperability specifications that support the delivery of public services.
The OSIAF is a crucial foundation for achieving joined-up and shared public services, where systems are developed collaboratively and good practice is shared. Interoperability is not something that is confined to systems development, it has to be a crucial element of how we develop our architecture in terms of the people, the processes and the technology together.
This update provides more practical information to help public service delivery organisations to implement the OSIAF and fully engage in the practitioner network which has been set up to support it. An implementation roadmap sets out steps that can be taken in all public sector organisations to effectively participate in the OSIAF.
It is important that the requirement for interoperable and standards compliant solutions is built into processes across the public sector, such as procurement and grant funding. The new document includes guidance for procurement, finance and legal officers, helping them to build interoperability into procurement exercises and conditions of grant funding.
The practitioner network approach is helping to bring together communities of interest from organisations who share a common purpose or who are involved in multi-agency projects. The network provides a forum for organisations to discuss interoperability and to agree on ways of collaborating to deliver more effective and efficient public services.
The Executive is engaged with its public service delivery partners at all levels to facilitate the effective reform of our public services. We believe that this approach is making a real difference to citizens and communities.
- The revised Openscotland Information Age Framework (OSIAF) is available at www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2006/08/24092730/0.
- Transforming Public Services: the next phase of reform is available at www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2006/06/15110925/0, and the consultation period is open until the end of September.
- The consultation on a National Strategy for Shared Services is available at www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2006/05/11102023/0, the consultation period is now closed.
Autor(en)/Author(s): Craig Russell
Quelle/Source: eGov monitor, 11.09.2006
