The Scottish Government

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Executive Summary

The purpose of this report on the Efficiency and Reform Fund (ERF) is to summarise the achievements of the projects that received funding. The projects and activities outlined in this report represent just some of the activities under way across the public sector contributing to the overall purpose and objectives of the Scottish Government.

Background

The Efficiency and Reform Fund was created in April 2006. The purpose of the Fund was to support the Efficiency and Reform Agenda by providing resources to accelerate significant programmes of work to drive efficiencies, reform and productivity in the delivery of world class public services in Scotland.

Although an initiative of the previous administration, the Fund's purpose was realigned to contributed to the delivery of the Scottish Government's National Performance Framework, in particular to National Outcome 15 Our public services are high quality, continually improving, efficient and responsive to local people's needs. This is just one of the workstreams working to deliver the National Outcomes.

The projects supported by the Efficiency and Reform Fund have contributed to the efficiency agenda, supporting shared services and continuous improvement, and many are focussing on a journey which involves 'simplify, standardise and share'.

What have we achieved?

Centres of Expertise have developed new working relationships and partnerships some of which are cross sector, and are improving the quality of services.

Following the John McClelland Review of Public Sector Procurement in Scotland, a number of projects were funded to create Procurement Centres of Expertise covering Local Government, the wider public sector and Further and Higher Education.

• Since its inception Procurement Scotland has secured £30 million of savings through Scottish public sector organisations accessing its contracts. Targeted savings over the 3 years of the spending review (to March 2011) are in the region of £83 million.
• e-Procurement Scotland has been live since 2002 and is one of the most comprehensive and successful Public Sector eCommerce initiatives in the world. By the end of the financial year 2007/08 2.3 million purchase orders had been raised via the system covering 9.3 million item lines to a total value of about £3 billion.
• ePS is now live in 96 public bodies in Scotland with £2.47 billion worth of transactions in 2008, an increase of 69% on the previous year.
• Advanced Procurement for Universities and Colleges (APUC) is the procurement Centre of Expertise for Scotland's Universities and Colleges. ePS has been implemented in 32 institutions to date. So far this has generated £57 million in throughput and over, 84,000 orders, with 3,777 users and over 5,500 suppliers. Between May and October 2008 there was £144,000 worth of savings with estimated further savings of £442,000.

Collaboration and Sharing across the Public Sector

The public sector has made significant progress with a range of funded projects that support collaboration across sectors and with our public sector partners.

• The Common Performance Management Platform for Police Service in Scotland Project will be complete in September 2010. The key benefit from this project is the added value provided to the police by providing an integrated and consistent source of information. This will allow for more informed decision making and a better understanding of police performance. The net result will be more officers released from time consuming research to undertake more customer focused activities which result in reduced crime levels and increased detections.
• The Tripartite Fleet Management Project was the first such collaboration between the three emergency services. The key achievements include breakdown of communication barriers, framework agreements in place, a research and development group created and a number of workshops operational. Within the first two years of the project there have been savings of approx £1.6 million. The project is on course to achieve annual savings of £4 million from the cost of purchasing and maintaining vehicles.
• The Baseline Study of Corporate Services will provide the evidence with which discussions can take place around ensuring the relative efficiency and effectiveness of corporate service business functions.

Local Government Achievements

A number of the projects in receipt of funding from the Efficiency and Reform Fund were from local government. Some of the key achievements in this area include:-

• Significant improvements in capacity, service and efficiency
• Customer First - over £40 million savings and
• a shared system which allows councils to keep accurate (and up to date) customer records
• a national land and property gazetteer
• a national card management system
• a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programme
• Recruitment Portal - all councils signed up, with up to £6 million per annum savings, 80,000 applications in the first six months and time to hire staff reduced by a third
• Scotland Excel - 28 councils signed up addressing over £1billion of local government spend
• strategic focus and leadership has been essential for success in the development phase of the pathfinder work and is just as important to the full exploitation of what has been put in place. The establishment of a new COSLA Shared Services Board is key to the next phases.
• The Diagnostic Pathway has played a key role in helping many councils to focus, prioritise and revitalise existing initiatives. It has enabled a strategic and more ambitious approach to responding to the challenges of the current economic climate and the future financial outlook.
• the work on the Diagnostic has generated over 200 high level business cases, with the majority of councils progressing more detailed business cases and design work with projected net savings of over £200 million.
• national common areas for further collaboration have been identified in the areas of Business Support and Information Management; Customer Management; Finance; Flexible, mobile and home working; Human Resources; Procurement; Programme and Change Management; Property and asset management; and Transport.

• improving outcomes and customer service whilst delivering efficiency requires an integrated approach to managing change - people, process, technology and property.
• councils are on the 'simplify, standardise and share' journey and internal transformation is a key part of preparing for greater working with others.
• work is underway to develop the diagnostic toolkit to make it more generic and available to other areas of the public sector and Third Sector. People coming together and sharing their leading practice and experience has been a fundamental benefit of the projects that have been commissioned and bodies such as the Improvement Service are working with Scottish councils, Scottish Government, Health colleagues and the third sector as well as English Local Authorities and their delivery partners to enable others to build on what has been achieved by Scottish Local Government as well as supporting the realisation of the benefits that have now been identified by individual councils.

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