Efficiency improvements in Government are made by improving the ratio of inputs to outputs. This can be achieved by delivering the same services with fewer resources or by delivering more services with the same resources.
By having the right staff with the right skills in the right numbers working in the right way efficiency improvements can be made. Continually seeking more efficient ways of working should be a key strand of work for all public sector organisations. This will be particularly important in the next few years.
Efficient Government Plan
The Efficient Government Plan was published in November 2004 and outlines the Scottish Executive's strategy for improving the efficiency of the Scottish public sector. It contains measures to deliver at least £745 million of annually recurring cash-releasing efficiency gains and at least £300 million of recurring time-releasing efficiency gains by 2007-08. It contains an ambition to raise these figures to achieve £1.5bn of efficiency gains by 2007/08. It also outlines five workstreams where more work will be done to explore the potential for these areas to deliver efficiency gains.
Technical Notes
Efficiency Technical Notes (ETNs) have been published for the different initiatives delivering efficiency gains for investing in public services. The ETNs provide general information on each of the efficiency gains and explains what the efficiency improvement is, the amount of efficiency gain it is expected to deliver, the action needed in order to deliver the efficiency improvement, and how the efficiency gains will be measured, monitored and delivered.
Additional Efficiency Technical Notes for 2 newly identified projects are published here, ETN T/C7 and ETN T/C8.
Previous versions:
Outturn Report
The Outturn Report for the final year of the programme is available to view here - Outturn Report 2007-08 . This also includes an updated outturn for 2006-07.
The Outturn Report for the second year of the programme is available to view here :- Outturn Report 2006-07
A PDF version of the report if available to download from here :- PDF version
The Outturn Report for year 1 of the programme gives details of efficiency gains.