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Audit Scotland a statutory body set up in April 2000 ensure that the Scottish Government and public sector bodies held to account for the proper, efficient and effective use of public funds.says the country's public sector is making slow progress in achieving savings from shared services
The report, Improving public sector efficiency, says that shared services remain a "key challenge" for Scottish public bodies who are facing the greatest financial pressure since devolution.
In the first year of Scotland's Efficient Government Programme, the report says £12m was saved through shared services projects. Local authorities reported efficiency savings of £3.8m and the central government reported £3m.
The public sector must continually strive to improve efficiency
The Scottish Executive has said that shared support services, including IT, have the potential to generate "substantial" efficiency savings. It has called for public bodies to join up support service arrangements within and across sectors.
Welsh First Minister also calls for efficiencies
The Scottish report comes on the same day the Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones, is due to call on public service bodies in Wales such as the NHS, police and councils to become more efficient at Wales' first Public Services Summit.
Audit Scotland Report Highlights
• The public sector has reported £839 million of efficiency savings in the first year of the Efficient Government Programme. 57 per cent higher than the £534 million target. Of the reported savings, £254 million (30 per cent) have been delivered through better purchasing, better asset management and shared services, but there is still scope to increase savings from these areas.
• The scale of the financial challenges facing the Scottish public sector means that a new approach is needed that fundamentally reviews priorities and the delivery of services.
• While there is a significant amount of joint working, there's a continuing need for more and better coordination between public sector organisations to improve productivity and safeguard quality of service delivery.
• The public sector needs a better understanding of the relationship between costs, volume and quality of services to maximise improvements in productivity and reductions in cost.
• There must be less reliance on seeking efficiencies, through non-recurring savings such as asset sales
• Planning for two per cent efficiency savings each year will not be sufficient to bridge the gap between projected future spending and future funding.
• Better coordination could provide more consistency in reporting efficiency savings and allow better sharing of good practice.
Report Recommendations: The Scottish Government and public bodies should:
• ensure they have a priority-based approach to budgeting and spending
• continue to improve collaboration and joint working, overcoming traditional service boundaries
• improve information on costs, activity, productivity and outcomes, including setting baselines to measure performance against
• give greater urgency to developing benchmarking programmes
• maintain the momentum of activities and initiatives to improve purchasing and asset management and extend shared services
• ensure there is a joined-up approach to efficiency savings across the public sector, avoiding duplication
• ensure that plans are in place to deliver savings, clearly setting out what action will be taken, the level of savings to be delivered and how these will be measured
• strengthen the involvement of front-line staff, service providers and users in redesigning public services
Full Report
The Office of Public Sector Information has released new legislation relating to Social Security (Credits) Regulations which come into force from 6 April 2010
For the explanatory memorandum - please click here
For full legislative details - please click here
The DWP has released a summary of the activity statistics for the Pathways to Work programme:
Jobcentre Plus Pathways to Work
Key features of Jobcentre Plus Pathways to Work are:
- a series of mandatory work focused interviews (WFIs);
- new specialist adviser teams of specially trained incapacity benefit personal advisers (IBPAs);
- a Choices package of interventions to support return to work;
- new work focused condition management programmes developed jointly with local NHS providers; and
- 52 week return to Work Credit (RTWC) of £40 per week.
To access the latest information for Jobcentre Plus Pathways to Work, click here
Provider-Led Pathways to Work
Key features of Provider-Led Pathways to Work are:
- a series of mandatory work focused interviews (WFIs);
- a range of back-to-work support designed by providers
- new work focused condition management programmes developed jointly with local NHS providers; and
- 52 week return to Work Credit (RTWC) of £40 per week.
To access the latest information for Provider led Pathways to Work, click here
Capping a run of new business wins Civica OPENRevenues has been selected by the London Borough of Barnet for a 5-year managed service to provide integrated council tax, business rates and benefits software.
The transition to a fully managed service will enable Barnet's 250-strong team to focus on improved service delivery and efficiency. As well as application hosting delivered by Civica Connect the service covers electronic processing of documents and represents a landmark deal for the business. The new Civica service will replace the council's current Northgate system.More new business for Civica OPENRevenuesThe Barnet deal is one of several significant contracts signed in the last few weeks by the Civica OPENRevenues team including new business with Staffordshire Moorlands DC, South Lakeland DC, Eden DC. Thanet & Dover DC's have also agreed a shared service model using Civica software -
more details will follow in the next few days.
Socitm, the association for ICT and related professionals in the public sector, has released a policy briefing document in response to the Government’s ICT strategy.
The overall findings of the socitm report were that whilst they agreed with much of what was proposed and recognised a need for financial considerations they were “disappointed” that the Government appears to be promoting a programme geared towards cutting the costs of ICT, rather than focusing on cost savings and efficiencies that could be made through improved application of technology."...reducing spending is critical in the current financial climate – but it is disappointing that the Strategy fails to discuss or demonstrate the wider opportunity for reducing cost and
improving all public services through the application of ICT. We believe that a much greater emphasis should be placed on savings that would come from better technology deployment in order to achieve the Strategy’s stated aim of “improving the lives of the citizens and businesses it is here to serve”.Areas to be "addressed"The report also expresses concern "that a number of areas, currently missing from the strategy, will need to be addressed in order to achieve its successful local implementation." These include:
• a vision for (local) public services delivery and accountability;
• greater focus on data and information handling (personal and public) and information assurance for local public services;
• integration of the third sector in the Strategy given its prospective growing role in service delivery;
• a more sophisticated approach to IT infrastructures (Public Sector Network - PSN, G-cloud, Shared Data Centres, Government Applications Store – G-AS);
• greater emphasis on opportunities from new, potentially disruptive technologies; and
• the possibility of incentives for early adopters.Lords to debate "cost saving" decision
The socitm report is delivered when the debate over the role IT plays in achieving current cost saving objectives, is high on the agenda at both a local and national level. At the recent Civica Annual Conference 60% of Managers stated that IT was "critical" to improved performance in 2010, and the recent announcement of new unitary authorities in Norwich and Exeter, has now been passed to the House of Lords following reports of a split within the Government and opposition by the Conservative party.
Links: To read any of the supporting documents - please click on the links in the copy above.
socitm Policy Briefing Report
socitm website
Government ICT Strategy outline
Two new unitary councils have been announced by local government minister Rosie Winterton.
She confirmed new unitary status for the cities of Exeter and Norwich, leaving the surrounding counties as two-tier authorities.
Norfolk and Devon will remain unchanged. Suffolk, the third county reviewed by the Boundary Committee, has been asked to decide locally as there was ‘no over all consensus’
Mrs Winterton explained 'Exeter and Norwich are at the centre of regional economic activity in their areas and their economic performance is crucial for their residents and the wider area but added wit regard to the Suffolk decision that "No single proposal emerged that ministers believed local councils would unite behind.'
Councillor Steve Morphew, leader of Norwich City Council, said: '...A unitary Norwich on its existing boundary would benefit both the city and county and could deliver more efficiently and effectively...'Please click here for the full article from the LGC
The Cabinet office has released a summary document outlining the Government ICT Strategy
The ICT Strategy supports existing core public sector goals, set in Digital Britain, Building Britain’s Future, Excellence and fairness, and the Operational Efficiency Programme. The focus of these programmes is to:
• improve public service delivery
• improve access to public services, and
• increase the efficiency of public service delivery.Read the ICT Strategy Summary here
Links: To read any of the supporting documents - please click on the links in the copy above.
60 per cent of council managers at the 2010 Civica conference said IT is “critical” to local authority performance improvements and that the pressure to achieve ‘more for less’ drives council choices.
IT-based programmes will be “critical” to local authority performance improvements in 2010, according to our survey at the Civica annual conference held in Manchester last week. Nearly 60 per cent of those surveyed indicated IT remains “a key investment area” for 2010 in order to deliver critical service improvements.Unsurprisingly, financial pressures continue to dominate the local authority landscape, and in response the re-engineering of workflow processes (33 per cent) and greater use of mobile and flexible working (31 per cent) were identified as key strategies for driving further efficiencies.Shared Services & Organisational Change key to success?Shared services were also seen as a key lever within the current environment (25 per cent). Recognition is also growing that while effective technology has an important role to play in helping to sustain services and drive down costs at the local level, organisational change is critical to the transformation process.The conflicting pressures on local organisations to do ‘more with less’ were highlighted in the key priorities reported by respondents, which include sustaining service levels and delivering improvements in service performance and efficiency.New Service Innovations influenced by data.gov.ukRespondents are closely watching new service innovations. Nearly two thirds of respondents think that the newly-launched local information site data.gov.uk reported on this blog here will influence community services in some way: one third (33 per cent) believe that it will help councils identify demand for specific services and 29 per cent believe it will drive local authorities to improve service levels.Nearly half of those interviewed (47 per cent) are expecting spending cuts as the government has not provided the complete picture on public finances. David Roots, Managing Director, Local Government, Civica, said: "The uncertain economic and political climate presents plenty of challenges for local authorities; however, it is clear that technology continues to be seen as a powerful lever for achieving efficient service delivery while meeting local needs.“As the survey indicates, rationalising, re-engineering and automating processes is critical to delivering greater service effectiveness whilst reducing costs in all areas. There is still plenty of scope for local authorities and their partners to exploit technology in addressing the ‘more for less’ demands made upon them."For the full report on our survey results please click here
Audit Scotland a statutory body set up in April 2000 ensure that the Scottish Government and public sector bodies held to account for the proper, efficient and effective use of public funds.says the country's public sector is making slow progress in achieving savings from shared services
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