The Scottish Government

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1 Introdution and Executive Summary

The Modernising Government Fund ( MGF) was first announced to Parliament in February 2000 as a means to support innovation in the public sector, to address policy priorities for modernisation and particularly to support and promote 'joined-up' working.

The first MGF awards covered a range of common modernisation themes, and a £26 million package was put in place to support 36 projects. The results and achievements of these projects were reported in the Modernising Government Fund Round 1 Final Report, published in 2003.

Following the success of the initial MGF initiative, a second round of project submissions was considered, resulting in awards for the second round of MGF totalling £39.5 million, a significant continuing investment in modernisation of public services.

This time, the modernisation themes were more concentrated, to take account of lessons learned through MGF1 and ensure effective investment in areas which would deliver greatest value. Six key areas were targeted, and all Councils participated in one or more areas. A partnership approach was adopted, with key partners of COSLA, Scottish Executive Health Department and Scottish Executive Education Department.

In June 2005, the Scottish Executive commissioned CGL Associates Limited to produce a report describing the progress which has been achieved in MGF2. This report focuses on these achievements and highlights from the MGF2 investment, both documenting developments in MGF2 and indicating outputs and some outcomes.

The progress made in modernisation is significant, involving all Councils and the key partners mentioned, together with new partners who have joined in the modernisation drive along the way. The report can only begin to highlight a small selection of success stories, such has been the progress achieved.

Some of the key highlights of this progress are as follows:

• In the Citizen Account/Customer Relationship Management ( CA/ CRM) programme, by the end of MGF2, 26 Councils had committed to the CRM model, and more than half of the Councils had opened or were actively planning to open Contact Centres
• Many of the Contact Centres are beginning to report impressive service delivery efficiency and effectiveness statistics, as highlighted in the table in Section 2.2.3
• Scottish Ministers were involved in opening several new Contact Centres, including East Dunbartonshire who can boast an 'implementation' to 'go live' timeframe of only 5 weeks
• Early adopters of the CRM model, including Renfrewshire and East Renfrewshire, are now embarking on significant extensions to their CRM strategies, which will further extend customer choice and service availability
• Work completed to underpin the justification for a national approach to Citizen Account resulted in approval of a key work stream in MGF3 for the development of a national infrastructure, with cross-agency buy-in
• In the Smart Card programme, in excess of 400,000 multi-function cards are now in circulation (approximately 300,000 of these in the hands of young people through Dialogue Youth), including offering access to leisure, libraries, cashless catering and concessions for travel, with the national concessionary transport scheme set to build on this success through the issue of 1.2 million cards in 2006
• Through the Dialogue Youth ( DY) programme, all 32 Councils have active DY units helping to engage and empower the young people of Scotland through the provision of support and facilities in the areas of education, health, local authority services, feeling safe from crime, and the voluntary sector
• In the Definitive National Address for Scotland ( DNAS) programme, by the end of MGF2, 27 Councils had completed gazetteers or were in the final stages of completion, representing 95% of address data in Scotland
• The launch of the Assessors portal to all 14 Scottish Assessors and the public is a further key success, with in excess of 70,000 pages per week being accessed by the public
• Cross-agency benefits are already apparent through the Assessors portal with both the General Register Office for Scotland and the Scottish Executive reporting efficiency savings as a direct result
• Through the Scottish Exchange of Educational Data programme (ScotXed), schools are benefiting from the opportunity for increased self-evaluation of examination results and comparisons with a national benchmark, allowing evaluation and improvements to their learning and teaching methods to benefit their pupil communities
• There are indications that the improved quality of management information in schools is helping to reduce bureaucracy and free up valuable time for teaching
• The ScotXed programme has also helped deliver a greatly enriched pupil census process, offering greater data quality and analysis in a shorter period of time
• Through the eCare programme, cross-agency working to establish a Single Shared Assessment process and electronic record is resulting in improvements to the patient/client experience and is generating greater efficiencies and time releasing savings for practitioners
• Child protection messaging services have been introduced in some Councils, again under the eCare programme stream, to enable all agencies involved to obtain early alerts to potential child protection situations and to have access to electronic data on a 24x7 basis, thus reducing the time taken to assess situations
• Significant progress has been made towards the provision of an Integrated Children's Service Record and Integrated Assessment Framework.

These highlights merely scratch the surface of the wealth of initiatives and successes described in the report. As will be seen in the report, a number of the initiatives involve investment in infrastructure and 'future-proofing', the full benefits of which will only be realised and measurable at a later date. Thus we have much to look forward to, with the future launch of MGF3, which will enable significant tangible successes of the modernisation programme to be achieved with current partners, and will enable other public sector partners to benefit from the infrastructural investment.

The road to major change is not an easy one to follow, and we are grateful to all participating in the programmes of work for their diligence and determination to overcome the obstacles which are an inevitable consequence of such far-reaching and innovative changes to working practices. The success of partnership working is there for all to see, and we thank all participants in our partner public sector organisations for the hard work put in to this round of modernisation.

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