East Renfrewshire, South Lanarkshire and Fife Councils began the pilot on 20 August with support from the Improvement Service's Customer First programme.
The Cost Architecture Model is an Activity Based Costing (ABC) method that provides a route both to understand the transactions cost base and to evidence savings; in turn, it allows the value of different access channels to be understood.
Each council has identified a particular Business Improvement Project using the Cost Architecture to provide evidence of the cost of resources used by services with the potential for improving effectiveness and providing efficiency savings.
Robert McIlwain, Executive Director of Corporate Resources, South Lanarkshire Council, says, "We have been using lean thinking to improve the services we deliver and we see Cost Architecture as providing the missing link in this process which, until now, has been the ability to quickly but accurately cost services and processes as they are and also as they will be following a lean review.
"In today's economic climate there's an increasing focus on how we can achieve more for less. Using the Cost Architecture Service Cost calculator alongside lean thinking will ensure that the work our employees do adds maximum value to the services we provide."
Linda Wilson, East Renfrewshire Council's Customer Services Manager adds, "The delivery of effective customer service remains our principal goal; rightly, our customers assume and expect that we will do this cost effectively. The pilot will enable the Council to develop a solid evidence base around which to prioritise service delivery effectively and efficiently."
Supporting the Pilots
The Improvement Service will be co-funding the pilots and, together with esd-toolkit, supporting councils through facilitated workshops, online forums, telephone and specialist consultancy support, where required.
The workshops will guide the pilots through familiarisation with the esd-toolkit's Cost Architecture Model - and the Service Cost Calculator underpinning it - and prepare councils to plan, execute and review the pilots.
Sharing the Findings
The pilots will begin reporting towards the end of 2009 when case studies of their improvement projects and cost calculations will be made available for others to share in the learning. A further objective is to import the service costs into esd-toolkit for benchmarking and comparison purposes.
If you are interested in learning more about the pilot, contact Graeme McWilliams, East Renfrewshire Council and Chair, Scottish Local Toolkit Community or Martin Brown at the Improvement Service on 01506 775583. You can keep up to date with the esd toolkit Scottish community at www.esd.org.uk/scottishproject
