The Improvement Service (IS) is the national improvement organisation for local government in Scotland.
Our purpose is to help councils and their partners to improve the health, quality of life and opportunities of all people in Scotland through community leadership, strong local governance and the delivery of high quality, efficient local services.
Through a series of principles, the IS works to promote improvement in local government and among its partners to support them improve outcomes and reduce the outcome gaps within populations and within areas.
The IS delivers a range of products and services that support CPPs to build their capacity to deliver the public service reform agenda.
The IS has a non-partisan role to support all elected members in Scotland.
Latest Publication
A review of the impact of 2016-17 local authority budget cuts on the provision of money advice services which are funded and/or delivered by local authorities.
As well as news from the Improvement Service other news relevant to local government improvement in Scotland. is also published. The Improvement Service welcomes contributions from Scottish local authorities and partner organisations. If you have a story you would like to share, contact us.
The Improvement Services produces a series of newsletters on a range of subjects, including myaccount, elected members, tellmescotland as well as the main IS newsletter. Subscribe on this page.
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Find out about all the events and activities organised by the Improvement Service or of interest to Scottish local authorities here. If you would like to add an event to this calendar, please contact info@improvementservice.org.uk
You can quickly browse events from the calendar opposite, or go to the events page for full details of all events.
myaccount
Adopted by, among others, City of Edinburgh Council...
myaccount is the simple and secure sign-in service for online public services in Scotland.
It provides people living in Scotland with the ability to set up an online account. And, to use that online account - using a single user name and password if they choose - to access a range of online public services, such as paying council tax or requesting a parking permit, made available by service providers.
For public service providers, myaccount provides a secure and trusted authentication service that is standards-based, easy to integrate and free to use.
myaccount was soft-launched on 14 April 2014. Since then, it has been adopted by City of Edinburgh Council to allow citizens to access its online services securely, and by NHS Scotland to authenticate patients using ‘My Diabetes My Way’, its diabetes patient information portal.
myaccount has also been integrated with the National Entitlement Card Management System used to manage and fulfil National Entitlement Cards. As well as providing access to many public services, the card is used for the two national concessionary travel schemes run by Transport Scotland: one providing free nationwide bus travel to people aged over 60 years and to people with disabilities, and the other, the Young Person’s Scheme, which offers national discounted bus and rail travel to 16 to 18 year olds and young full-time volunteers aged 19-25.
For more information about myaccount, read the FAQs.
“Using the myaccount service for user provisioning and authentication avoids NHS Scotland having to develop similar solutions itself, substantially reducing our development costs and avoiding duplication across the public sector. By partnering with the myaccount service, our login management and administrative support overheads are significantly reduced. Patients also benefit by having a login that is quick and easy to use and maintain.”
