The Scottish Government

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Local Government Projects

The National Shared Services Board was created in April 2006 and had representation from COSLA, SOLACE, the Scottish Executive and the Improvement Service. Projects were categorised under five themes:

• Procurement initiatives
• Integrated ICT
• Shared Workforce Planning
• Shared Service Capacity
• Revenue and Benefits

The Board commissioned programmes around the key theme areas which would focus on:

• identifying, sharing and standardising around best practice process;
• sharing front line and back office services between councils; and
• sharing front line and/or back office services between councils and other public bodies in their area.

Procurement

Scotland Excel

Local Authorities in Scotland have a long history of successful collaboration in procurement, which included the collaborative buying initiatives facilitated by the Authorities Buying Consortium (abc), local partnerships across the country such as the Tayside Purchasing Consortium, the working arrangements between Aberdeenshire Council and Aberdeen City Council and amongst the three Ayrshire Councils, Dumfries and Galloway's participation in the Cumbria purchasing consortium, collaboration amongst the Clyde Valley Councils and local working with Primary Care Trusts.

A bid was received from Renfrewshire Council on behalf of its partners titled "Scotland Excel - Delivering Best Value for Local Authorities by Creating a Centre of Procurement Excellence". The project aims were to secure further benefits in cost and supplier quality while building capacity and excellence in procurement practice.

Scotland Excel's vision is to be recognised, respected and trusted by local authorities and suppliers as the leading procurement organisation in Scotland. Its key objectives are to:

• to deliver best value collaborative contracts;
• to increase procurement capacity and capabilities in the local government sector;
• to improve our engagement with suppliers; and
• to promote and share best practice with others.

A total of £4.5 million was awarded to the project and paid to Renfrewshire Council on behalf of Scotland Excel. The initial set up costs were approximately £1.1 million in the period up to 31 March 2008. The remainder of the funding provides stability to Scotland Excel until 2010/11. In addition to the funding from the ERF, the partner councils are contributing over £9 million over a three year period.

The project began in January 2007 and Scotland Excel launched on 1 April 2008. Significant achievements to date include:-

• 28 of the 32 councils have joined up;
• strong team of professional procurement staff in place in Paisley Head Office supported by Account Management, staff in regional offices in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Inverness to support local activities;
• delivered 11 new collaborative contracts with a total contract value of over £200 million with forecast annual savings of circa £3 million;
• 26 contracts (circa £600 million total value) now available to all Excel members;
• by the end of 2009, 45 contracts will be in place (total value circa £1 billion);
• 2008/2009 training courses delivered including ongoing Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply (CIPS) level 2 and 3 training courses in Glasgow and Edinburgh which will, when completed, deliver circa 350 training days;
• launched the 2009/2010 Enhancing Procurement Capabilities Training Programme which includes a range of courses and master classes from EU directives to cost/price structure analysis, contract management, negotiation, specification writing and project management techniques for procurement staff;
• first public sector body in Scotland to achieve Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply (CIPS) accreditation for standards of excellence in Purchasing Policies and Procedures; and
• recipients of the first Government Opportunities Awards Scotland (GO) John F McClelland Collaborative Procurement Award in October 2008.

Integrated ICT

eCare

eCare is the name given to the Scottish Government's multi-agency information sharing framework which covers, amongst other aspects, consent, standards, security, procurement, organisational development and technical issues relating to the secure electronic sharing of personal data.

Working with partners across the public and voluntary sectors in Scotland, eCare works to deliver these frameworks in a way which improves the quality of service for the people of Scotland.

The eCare Framework, at present, will handle electronic single shared assessments for community care users and can also be used by Children's Services practitioners to share information related to child protection. This will be followed by the development of a multi-agency assessment for children being developed by the Getting It Right Team and should also be used within community care to support joint reporting for the Community Care Outcomes Measures.

The remit of the programme was to deliver technology change and support business change for the delivery of a number of Scottish Government policy priorities. The original scope of the programme included:

• sharing assessments - sharing electronic single shared assessment (eSSA) for all community care groups in all 14 Data Sharing Partnership (DSP) geographies.
• child protection - the implementation of mechanisms to deliver child protection messaging (CPM) to Social Work and Education in all the DSP Local Authorities and many functions within Health, including all out of hours health practitioners. Following development of the Getting it Right for Every Child (GIRFEC) policy within Scottish Government, the eCare Programme was given funding to develop the Framework to allow information sharing to support this.

Two DSP areas have acted as Early Implementation sites (Ayrshire and Western Isles) since December 2007 providing a demonstration of the benefits to multi-agency working from effective information sharing. The Programme has also achieved: agreement with Oracle for a single User Licence Agreement allowing full unrestricted use of their business products for information sharing at a lower cost for all Scottish public sector bodies; agreement with major Social Work and Education vendors of modifications to their products, enabling connection to the eCare Framework without bespoke work at a local agency level; and securing of £5 million of funding from Scottish Ministers to further develop the eCare framework to support the GIRFEC agenda, with implementation continuing up to March 2011.

Different benefits will be realised for different audiences. Those using the services made available will experience a reduction in repetition of assessment information, more effective recording of appropriate information and more effective sharing of appropriate assessment information.

Practitioners will see benefits in the:

• reduction in time spent recording information already collected by other agencies;
• the ability to share and receive assessment related information, in a timely manner;
• a reduced risk of inaccurate decision making within assessment, care planning; and
• resource access with enhanced decision making ability due to wider access to more comprehensive information.

Finally, agencies will benefit from more effective decision making at service user level, more effective access to appropriate resources at the right times with better targeting of resources and a reduction in the repetition of assessment with corresponding time savings for assessment staff.

e-Planning

The planning system plays a central role in co-ordinating Scotland's sustainable economic growth. The ePlanning Efficient Government Programme is delivering a step change in the planning service, making it simpler and more accessible. Technology has been successfully developed and implemented to allow faster and more transparent planning decisions. The improved service will increase efficiencies in the public sector, provide savings to businesses and offer citizens greater confidence in the process.

The ePlanning Programme is a partnership of all the key organisations involved with planning across Scotland - 32 councils, 2 National Parks, Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA), Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), Historic Scotland, Scottish Water, Transport Scotland, Directorate of Planning and Environmental Appeals and the Scottish Government. It also incorporates the views of those who will directly benefit from the systems being put in place, members of the public, architects, agents and developers

The primary objectives of the programme were to drive maximum efficiencies by working across a number of bodies, facilitating shared services, standardising forms, communication and processes and sharing best practice. Joint procurement was used to obtain considerable savings and bring all planning authorities up to a consistent level of service delivery.

Funding has been directed to four workstreams:

• Online applications and appeals
• Online planning information systems
• eConsultation
• Online local development plans

Online applications and appeals - Following a thorough procurement process, the contract was awarded in 2007 within the budget allocated. The project has delivered a single ePlanning Scotland website for submitting planning applications or appeals anywhere in Scotland. The system was released to partners for testing early in 2009, with the website launched nationally on 29th April 29th.

The easy to use site includes standard forms, the ability to attach supporting documents, online help which forms a guide and a fee calculator. A mechanism has been provided for all Planning Authorities to receive applications and appeals electronically with associated efficiencies for the Planning Authority and the public, architects, agents and developers. This project has delivered a technical solution but has also been the catalyst for driving business process improvements, removing activities from the planning process that add little or no value.

Online planning information systems - Increasing the amount and quality of planning information available online is making the planning system more transparent, accessible and inclusive. This benefits members of the public and professionals. ePlanning also allows the progress of applications to be automatically tracked and comments to be made. The planning information made available online is accurate and up to date. The system also allows Planning Authorities to better manage and organise the process of determining an application, improving public sector efficiencies.

Following the competitive dialogue procurement process, the contract was awarded in 2008 with excellent value being achieved on behalf of the partners through the joint procurement. The majority of the phased implementation was completed in time for the national launch on 29th April 2009. Seventeen partners are involved. The successful implementation of the system has already provided the catalyst for the improvement in service provision in terms of efficiencies, accessibility and sharing of information. This project is bringing all Planning Authorities up to the same high level of service delivery as other leading Authorities.

Online local development plans (OLDP)- Local Development Plans are at the heart of Scotland's planning system and set out the appropriate locations for future development, which areas should receive special protection and other essential proposals. They form the basis by which decisions on planning applications and appeals are made. Online plans will be easy to use, allowing simple map searches and the display of associated policies and supporting information in either a map or text format. Members of the public and professionals will be able to view documents as they are prepared and submit comments electronically.

Procurement has recently been completed and the contract awarded in May 2009. Continued support and commitment from the 24 Planning Authorities involved in the OLDP project has been maintained, and a workable proposal secured within budget. A phased implementation will take place during 2009 and 2010.

eConsultation - Many planning applications require specialist advice before a decision can be made by the Planning Authority. The statutory organisations which provide this advice are improving the way they work through the greater use of electronic systems. For example, SEPA and Historic Scotland have completed the implementation of their casework management systems which were funded through the ePlanning Programme.

ePlanning allows planning authorities to send the consultee organisations relevant information electronically and allow them access to the documents which support the application. Consultee organisations can then carry out an assessment and return their responses. Successful eConsultation will drive efficiencies within the Planning Authorities and the Statutory consultees. Some Planning Authorities have already begun this approach and are sharing lessons learnt.

The programme has retained and built the support of the planning community within central and local government and across the users of the service including the general public, architects, agents and businesses. A great level of awareness has been achieved within the relevant stakeholder communities and the programme is recognised as being a vehicle for the delivery of many efficiencies in the Planning system and those organisations which interact with it. There are opportunities in the future to build on the technical platform and strong partnerships that have been established. This may expand to other areas of local government functionality which operate in a similar way to planning, providing further efficiency savings with limited additional investment.

The overall budget is £11.2 million. The programme provides an opportunity to release £16.7 million in savings to Planning Authorities over the next ten years but will also deliver considerable value to citizens and businesses by creating a higher quality, faster, more consistent, more inclusive and easier to use planning system. These end user benefits of £43.8 million bring the total savings to £60.5 million. The cash efficiency savings will cover the ongoing cost of the new systems to make the programme sustainable, while the staff savings will be used to provide a higher quality service with a greater processing capacity.

Customer First

Customer First is a Scottish Government sponsored programme developed in partnership with all 32 Scottish local authorities and managed, with the support of COSLA and SOLACE, under the direction of the Improvement Service (IS).

It supports the principles of: easier to access, better integrated, local services; effective collaboration across the public sector; better use of public resources; high standards of public service; and willingness to innovate and learn from others.

In October 2005 the then Scottish Executive announced a £34.5 million joint government and local government initiative called Customer First. Scottish councils chose the name 'Customer First' because it represented their collective vision of,"…. where possible, any customer who comes into contact with Scottish councils should have their service delivered, their problem resolved, or their question answered at the first point of contact….".

The Customer First initiative was the outcome of 32 separate local authority submissions to the Modernising Government Fund (MGF) aggregated into a nationally agreed set of programmes and priorities. The Scottish Cabinet endorsed the initiative and in October 2005, Tom McCabe, the then Finance Minister, together with the leader of South Lanarkshire Council, launched Customer First.

In February 2006, Cabinet approval was also given for a new local government National Entitlement Card (NEC) scheme (a public services smartcard) and Card Management System (CMS) - the initial priority being to deliver the Scotland wide free bus travel scheme for older and disabled citizens. A further provision of £8 million over three years was provided for this purpose and to support the wider roll out of the NEC across a number of local services. The Improvement Service (IS) was tasked with providing the overarching management arrangements for the initiative.

The Scottish Government and the subsequent local government Concordat have provided continued support for Customer First - both as a policy vision for modern public services which use modern technology and as a programme for improving the quality of local government services.

Governance

A Customer First National Steering Group was established, made up of senior officers from both local government and national public sector bodies. Together with SOLACE, local government partners nominated a Chief Executive (or equivalent) to chair a number of Programme / Project Boards that could deliver a number of distinct, but also inter-dependant programmes and projects. These Boards are now directed by lead councils (but still within the overall Steering Group governance structure).

Two major work streams were established. Firstly, £28 million was distributed to local councils to address local priorities - but within the centrally managed programme being overseen by the IS. Secondly, the £6.5 million balance of the fund, coupled with the additional £8 million NEC provision, was centrally managed (in partnership with a number of lead councils), with the immediate priorities of building a national ICT infrastructure that could underpin jointly developed / managed local government services; underpin the Citizen Account and card management for the NEC and implement the National Gazetteer for Scotland.

Each local council was tasked with setting up its own Customer First programme priorities and providing a single point of contact at the local council level, but all working within a national framework, i.e. local programme activities were 'guided' by the four main national work streams of the national ICT infrastructure, NEC, CA / Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and gazetteer. Representatives of the 32 local Customer First programmes made up the membership of the national Programme / Project Boards. Where appropriate, external members from partner organisations were included on the various Boards, e.g. representation from the NHS, Transport Scotland etc.

National Initiatives and Achievements

The Customer First Programme comprises of:

• National ICT Infrastructure
• Citizens Account Service
• National Entitlement Card
• National Gazetteer

National ICT Infrastructure

Whilst recognising that Customer First is not a technology programme, a major part of the initiative is to provide an underpinning ICT infrastructure that can support joined up/shared services across local government and across the wider public sector.

The infrastructure, comprising a secure data processing environment (primary (live) site at South Lanarkshire Council and a secondary (development and disaster recovery) site at Glasgow City Council) together with shared investment and shared ownership in hardware, telecommunications, operating system software, security and shared business applications across all 32 councils, provides the technology platform for Customer First and is available as a hosting environment for other public sector business applications and to underpin national shared services and systems.

With network links across all 32 authorities the infrastructure is now fully operational and available to host applications on the system. It currently hosts the basic Citizen's Account data set for Scottish citizens and the National Personal Licensing Database

Importantly, a secure national ICT infrastructure also underpins the progression towards a secure online service environment for public sector customers and secure internet connectivity to Government services though a personal Citizen's Account.

One of the main objectives of the national infrastructure programme, therefore, was to provide a generic business process for authenticating a member of the public to use a particular council service, which could also be applied across all of the Scottish public sector, i.e. to securely access non-council services.

Case Study - National Personal Licence Database (NPLD)

The NPLD project is managed by the Improvement Service and hosted within the National Infrastructure.

The Licensing Team within the Scottish Government initiated the project to enable the creation and management of personal licences, to comply with changes to the Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005.

The project vision was to create a national register for personal licence holders, to introduce a facility that would allow submission of licences online and to establish a shared service for all councils.

It was recognised that this would be a complex project from an operational and technical perspective as licensing boards and councils operate different IT systems and business processes to create and manage licence applications. No technology existed to permit licensing boards to check personal licence holders against national records and no technology existed to enable councils' IT systems to adequately communicate with the National Infrastructure.

The project goals were to:

• Create a web portal to enable all councils to input personal licences and a separate site to allow the public to view (restricted) licence details.
• Create a facility to enable councils who use Northgate (formerly known as Anite) Licensing as a local licensing application to connect to the new web portal through the National Infrastructure and transfer their existing licence records.

The NPLD web portal went live in May 2008 with the home page under the OneScotland banner, enabling councils and licensing boards to create and manage personal licences.

Use of the NPLD portal continues to grow and since January 2009 licence input to the system has risen by 120%. This figure is expected to continue rising significantly during the run up to 1st September when personal licences granted under the Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005 take effect.

City of Edinburgh Council's Systems Manager commented,

"Our staff find the NPLD easy to use and when all councils are inputting records it will assist in checking whether or not an applicant holds a licence in another licensing authority."

The expected national benefits from this project will be realised when the database is fully populated and all councils use the system for the creation and management of personal licences. We expect to reach this position in late 2009. The public portal to enable a citizen to view (restricted) personal licences will follow in 2010.

Citizen's Account Service

Basic Citizen's Accounts are a council's definite electronic record of their residents, containing basic personal data verified against data from the General Register Office for Scotland and from the council's existing population records.

The Citizen's Account Service (CAS) is an optional service which citizens can choose to have, (although basic Citizens Accounts now exist for all National Entitlement Card holders). Each council has the facility to set up, verify and manage the electronic records for its own residents. In time, residents with an account will also be able to view their own account and keep their personal details up to date (name, address, telephone etc). The system allows customers to share changes to that data through a secure public sector messaging system, e.g. if the resident notifies their council of a change of address, the council could (where the resident has consented to share their data) pass that information onto other public service providers.

Currently, the CAS and the underlying authentication model are going through a pilot implementation with a sample of councils (and a sample of the 46 core transactional services).

National Entitlement Card Scheme

The National Entitlement Card (NEC) was developed to ensure that citizens have access to all of the services they are entitled to and access is as convenient as possible. The card replaces numerous different and disparate schemes which previously operated throughout Scotland.

Councils wanted to replace these numerous public sector card schemes with the principle of customers having their own multi-application public services smartcard, where one card type and a smaller number of cards could be used for transport, for leisure, for libraries, for council payments etc.; and for young people to use it for other services such as, schools, transport, school meals, school libraries and proof of age and as their Young Scot card.

A number of councils such as Dundee and Aberdeen had previously identified that it was possible to develop a generic smartcard model that could support a local council multi-application smartcard scheme as well as satisfying the wider requirements of the public sector.

This model is designed upon the principle of securely storing 'credentials' on a card, e.g. a travel ticket, a library membership number, an entitlement code (such as free school meal), or by applying a nationally accredited brand to the card, e.g. Proof of Age Hologram.

The major application for the NEC is transport in particular the national concessionary fares schemes. The introduction of the concessionary fares scheme provided councils (who had previously administered their own local travel schemes) with the opportunity to work collectively to develop the new national smartcard scheme and to incorporate national and local travel concessions into that scheme.

Since the implementation of the scheme in 2006, over 1.9 million cards have been issued with an average reduction in costs of £1.37 per card: savings of more than £2 million have been accrued by delivering the card at a national level.

In addition to supporting the national concessionary travel schemes, some councils also use the cards to support their local library and leisure services. Cards issued to young people are able to support cashless catering, school libraries, registration, controlled access, public libraries and 'show and go' services (e.g. Young Scot / Euro <26 discounts) and the nationally accredited Proof of Age scheme.

The Improvement Service Customer First team have been working with all Scottish councils and Sopra, a strategic partner, to develop and deliver a Scottish public sector Card Management System (CMS) capable of delivering and maintaining councils' requirements to provide the NEC to their citizens. As a result of this work, the new system, a managed service run by ESP Systex, went live in all councils on 23 March 2009, replacing the previous management and call handling arrangement.

Case Study - NEC and CMS Procurement

In May 2005 the Scottish Cabinet endorsed the use of the proposed NEC scheme to support the new Scotland-wide free bus scheme for older and disabled people. This meant that up to 1.1 million customers needed to be registered and issued with a card by March 2006. The Improvement Service Customer First operational group with the support of Dundee City Council (endorsed by the SOLACE support of all 32 Chief Executives) embarked on a national procurement exercise for smartcards, smartcard bureau services and the implementation of a Scotland-wide card management solution (CMS). A key driver for the immediate implementation of a shared solution was based upon Project Board advice to Chief Executives that it would be impossible to carry out 32 separate procurement exercises and implement 32 solutions within the project timescales. The Project Board also advised that a national procurement was likely to drive down the costs to the then Scottish Executive Transport Division and to Scottish councils.

The common technical requirements for smartcards were put into an EU tender specification. This national procurement reduced the unit price to the public sector from the local council costs of between £1.21 and £1.82 (based on volumes) down to £0.50p. The initial card procurement alone therefore saved £800,000 in Year 1.

Additional savings have also been accrued through the common procurement of smartcard bureau services (the data preparation, encoding and despatch of the card). The common requirements for this have resulted in a typical low volume unit cost of £1.70 down to £1.24 (for a paper based application process, which is the predominant process for concessionary fares) and to £0.84p (for an electronic application).

Since the implementation of the scheme in 2006 over 1.9 million cards have been issued with an average reduction in costs of £1.37 per card; savings of more than £2 million have been accrued by delivering the card at a national level.

In 2007/ 2008 a national requirement for a Scotland-wide multi application CMS resulted in the commissioning of a bespoke Scottish public sector solution, the current projected cost of which is £410,000. A typical council's stand alone procurement for a CMS is £50,000 (based upon previous local procurements) and therefore the estimated savings of a national CRM are £1.2 million. Further beneficiaries will be organisations such as Transport Scotland, who will receive a managed service from councils rather than having to procure, process and manage a separate transport card scheme, i.e. purchase, process and distribute more than a million travel cards and also procure a CMS to manage the process. Similarly, the Young Scot organisation has been able to transfer the local and national Young Scot services onto the NEC.

National Gazetteer

The National Gazetteer for Scotland aims to establish a single property information source that adheres to common agreed standards and, together with the Citizen's Account, will be used to improve service delivery within and across councils (and throughout the Scottish public sector). Corporate Address Gazetteers (CAGs) created by councils are also linked to a national gazetteer which provides a managed property information service within the national ICT infrastructure. Councils have identified a number of benefits of a corporate and a national gazetteer:

• customers will benefit from improved services where CAGs are used to integrate back office systems to enable faster, more accurate access to council information;
• improved business processes will allow reduction in time spent in duplicating effort in keeping address based datasets up to date and free up time for frontline staff;
• information will be constantly updated thus avoiding existing problems when people move into new properties;
• all address-based information will be current and be made available throughout the public sector. This will in turn provide up to date, real-time information for organisations such as emergency services to help deal with calls to properties for example new developments that do not have assigned postcodes (and which might not be available through tools such as satellite navigation systems);
• address-based information will be continually improved as more users and organisations access it and queries about addresses can be fed back to local custodians for correction/inclusion;
• use of national addressing standards (BS 7666) enables information to be exchanged with other organisations and applications without developing complex exchange routines, thus reducing the cost of developing applications.

A key element of the new management arrangements for Customer First is the appointment of lead councils tasked with specific operational responsibilities and Stirling Council (the lead council for the National Gazetteer) has assigned Forth Valley GIS with this role. This managed service includes overseeing ongoing user acceptance testing, co-ordinating update and scheduled maintenance of the National Gazetteer from the 32 local authority corporate address gazetteers, managing data quality assurance and quality improvement work, frontline support, performance monitoring and review.

Ongoing development work streams will be overseen / managed by the IS and Forth Valley GIS. Communication with the gazetteer community will be managed through a National Gazetteer Community of Practice on the IS website. This website is becoming a key resource for sharing information and encouraging collaboration amongst practitioners.

The National Gazetteer is now supporting a number of Scotland-wide schemes including:

• ePlanning
• National Landlord Registration Scheme
• New National Homebuyers Packs.

The Customer First programme also includes national support for the local authority CRM programme which is detailed separately in this report

National Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

In partnership with West Lothian Council, the Customer First programme provides national CRM support to all councils and their CRM suppliers, it also includes a specific framework contract with one supplier (which resulted from a national procurement exercise with Scottish councils).

Placing customers at the heart of the process is a worthwhile though challenging goal, considering an average council offers around 800 services. Holding information on customers, their interactions and entitlements across multiple systems in various formats adds a further layer of complexity. Developing a 'single view' of the customer to build services around their needs therefore presents a genuine difficulty.

The core of the CRM programme, supports the redesign of council services around customers' needs. Working in partnership with local authorities, the programme aims to:

• deliver, via the local council CRM and back office integration process, a model for the development of single point of contact for the first time delivery of public services (to be able to manage transactions via a sustainable Citizen Account);
• incorporate the use of the Citizen Account (CA) that provides the capability to process and retain data about customer outcomes. The schema for the local CA is based around the BS8766 standard and the transactional management of the CA will be maintained through a local CRM solution;
• develop a nationally accredited qualification for customer services staff;
• develop and implement a standardised set of procedures for monitoring and measuring customer satisfaction.

Ultimately, the aim is for the delivery of core services at the first point of contact (towards a target of 75%) and to set high targets - up to 95% - for customer satisfaction ratings.

To support councils in achieving a minimum of 75% customer query resolution at first point of contact, the Customer First program, through the A-Z and Knowledgebase project, has made particular inroads in helping customers and staff access and retrieve information consistently across a range of service channels. This includes finding answers to their questions on council websites. In partnership with the Electronic Service Delivery (ESD) toolkit ( esd-toolkit - Communities), Scottish councils have developed a set of tools and standards - the Scottish Navigation List, the Scottish Service List and the Scottish A - Z - to improve council web content organisation, search and navigation and support consistent self-service for citizens. A growing number of councils have deployed these products as they refresh their websites. This means that visitors to, for example, Inverclyde, Perth and Kinross and Aberdeen councils' websites will be presented with the same web content organisation, search and navigation structure. Councils deploying the Lagan CRM product (see below) have also been able to take advantage of these products and are deploying the Scottish Navigation List as the classification scheme used in the national CRM product and are thus able to provide consistency across channels.

A key part of the national CRM programme is to provide a national CRM solution and to provide a hosted solution for those partners who want CRM as part of a managed ICT service. A national procurement (with, and on behalf of, councils) resulted in the CRM company Lagan being appointed as partner to the National CRM Project. Its CRM solution, Frontline, is currently being deployed in participating councils. The case study below illustrates some of the savings achieved by the national procurement process.

The framework agreement with Lagan, offering attractive rates and conditions not available to a typical council acting on its own, also offers the potential for extension to the wider public sector within Scotland. As of March 2009, 13 councils have standardised on the Lagan product meaning that some 1.5 million Scottish citizens are now having their service and information requests managed by the same common platform. This example of shared services in practice and the critical mass that has developed opens up significant opportunities to standardise platforms, simplify processes, share best practice and build capacity Scotland wide. In addition, Glasgow Housing Association, the UK's second largest, has built on the National CRM Project's lead and framework agreement allowing it to accelerate deployment significantly.

Case Study - National CRM Procurement

In 2007 the Customer First support team worked with 5 councils to create a Scottish local government national CRM specification and to undertake a national procurement.

The outcome of this resulted in the chosen supplier agreeing a framework contract with a reduction of almost 50% of the current costs to Scottish councils (based upon the supplier's charges to a single council). Taking the figures from the Scottish Borders Customer First budget this has resulted in a CRM saving to the council of £230,000 (Scottish Borders was one of the 5 councils involved in the national procurement exercise and the other 4 have also benefited from this saving).

Councils have now started to use the framework contract and current estimates are that 15 councils will use the contract over the 2007/09 period. On the basis of 15 councils working together within the framework contract the likely savings for councils will be almost £3.5 million over the next two years.

The added value of the CRM programme is that councils are also working together to create common solutions such as content management and scripts, customer services use, self-service use, security, elected member caseload management and customer complaints. This will deliver further savings on the chosen suppliers' support costs.

Another key part of the CRM programme, a nationally accredited qualification for customer service staff, has been developed by a consortium of Scottish councils under Renfrewshire Council's lead. The Customer Service Professional Qualifications are open to all council employees who deal with the public, regardless of previous experience and are built around the unique and distinct context of Scottish local government. The qualifications are available at three levels (Award, Certificate and Diploma) and are nationally-recognised, Scottish Qualifications Authority ( SQA) certificated, endorsed and supported by both COSLA and SOLACE and are portable across Scottish local government.

The qualifications are also designed to be flexible, fit in with staff time and use a 'light touch' approach with online learning and assessment methods that allow for minimum administration centrally and at the point of delivery, as well as being cost effective for councils.

In October 2008, Scotland's first Customer Service Professional graduated and the Qualifications are now being rolled out Scotland-wide. The Qualifications are intended to provide authentic, useful skills for public sector customer service employees, to recognise and reward professionalism in local government and to raise the standards for new and existing staff.

Customer satisfaction levels are one of a number of important indicators of an organisation's performance. Measuring customer satisfaction in a more robust and efficient manner is therefore one key element of improving outcomes' measurement. In 2008, a jointly-commissioned study by the Improvement Service and Consumer Focus Scotland established a strong appetite amongst Scottish councils to work together to understand how each measures and reports on customer satisfaction levels.

The Customer Satisfaction and Experience Measurement project - in partnership with Consumer Focus Scotland and other key stakeholders in Audit Scotland, Scottish Government, local government and Community Planning Partners - is now progressing the development of a common standard for customer satisfaction and experience measurement while building capacity and the sharing of best practice in the field of customer satisfaction and experience measurement.

The project's key deliverables - which will be available over the period April - December 2009 - include a bank of core and non-core questions; data standards to ensure data is recorded and stored in a consistent format; workshops and training support and good practice toolkits for practitioners on how to implement the products as a means of developing a consistent standard for measuring and reporting customer satisfaction and measurement across Scottish local government.

Lessons Learned - Looking Ahead

While the Customer First programme has now delivered the bulk of its original objectives, activities to support the broad aims of the programme and to deliver specific projects will continue over the next two years:

• the National ICT Infrastructure 'basic' connectivity has been established but the full exploitation of web services has still to be achieved.
• with the NEC some of the councils are beginning to achieve full exploitation but for many others (including Transport Scotland) there is a major challenge in rolling out the infrastructure that can deliver the full value of the NEC to customers.
• the CRM roll out has made significant progress at the local level, however, to fully gain the benefits from shared development, common CRM modules need to be developed and a nationally hosted ICT solution requires a full benefits' realisation study.
• in respect to the National Gazetteer, some critical national solutions have been deployed but a considerable number of organisations are still in the process of analysing their business needs in relation to a nationally available land and property service.
• for online services, work on the local pilots will need to accelerate.
• implementation of the OneScotland portal needs to be aligned to the citizen's portal.

By doing this the National ICT Infrastructure will develop the potential for low cost and more secure online transactions and at the same time give Scotland a truly leading edge online presence.

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