There's news from several shared services projects and we need your opinions on any toolkits you've used.
- Public Information Notices Portal
- Pensions
- Improving Together - Building on the Diagnostic
- Improving Together - Communities of Practice
- What does your transformation change programme mean in real terms?
- Toolkits reviewed
Public Information Notices (PINs) Portal
The objective over coming months is to have the PINs project in an operational state by the end of September 09. The legislative process with the Scottish Government has commenced and through June and July the draft regulations will be prepared for review and subsequent consultation. A full legislation timeline work plan can be viewed at the PINs Community of Practice site (you will need to register).
Although the full parliamentary process will take us through to January 2010 much can be achieved in finalising the functionality testing and the business process mapping with the input of pilot councils. This will be a key focus of attention through June, July and August.
The aim of the project is to establish if there are any opportunities to improve the management of the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) in Scotland. This project includes identifying potential broader benefits, and providing information and recommendations to inform any future development of the project. The project will provide a systematic evidence-based approach to determine if there are alternative options to improve current arrangements and will cover both the administration and investment workstreams.
Specifically the outputs of the project will cover national and international evidence and benchmarking to inform:
- Any relationship between scale and costs
- Any relationship between scale and performance
- Any relationship between scale, risk and risk management
Hymans Robertson have been commissioned to do the analysis on both workstreams to inform the Options Appraisal Report.
The Report is to look at three areas of work:
- separate funds, common administration
- separate funds, common investment managements
- rationalisation and merger of funds
The Options Appraisal Report is currently being developed, which will presented to the Project Board in August 2009.
Improving Together - Building on the Diagnostic
The IS has begun a series of events and workshops designed to encourage and help practitioners to network and share their experiences with others who are developing the outputs of the Diagnostic. Using these themed events and the communities of practice technology platform that we offer in partnership with the IDeA (www.communities.idea.gov.uk), people are encouraged to share and communicate the stories of how they are progressing with devising and creating their high level and detailed design plans and how they plan to implement changes to realise the benefits identified.
It is possible that part of this project will involve creating a toolkit which could help people at councils and other public sector organisations to complete a Diagnostic review and go on to build sound business cases that can bring about transformed service delivery. To this end, some existing toolkits (a full list of these appears below) have had an initial first-pass review and been evaluated in terms of functionality and content to see if there is anything out there that we can usefully signpost to. We are also looking to gather your many stories and case studies so that we can contextualise the content.
If you'd like to know more, ask questions, or get involved with any aspect of this, whether it's networking with others progressing the design stages, volunteering your experiences and expertise, helping develop, advise or contribute to any part of the toolkit, or giving feedback on this project, please get in touch with any of the Shared Services team - Paul Dowie or Gordon Nelson.
Improving Together - Communities of Practice
A couple of communities of practice have risen out of the Improving Together work:
- Mobile and Flexible Working in Scotland group - Contact Mark Baker, Lee Parry and join the collaboration site at http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk/c/1339395/home.do. There is also a special interest group working together to realise value from the BT Profiling currently underway or suggested at a number of councils.
- Programme and Change Managers in Scotland group - the collaboration site is at http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk/c/888150/home.do
What does your transformational change programme mean in real terms?
The IS has been involved with the development of a specification and sourcing a supplier for an inspirational video that Dumfries and Galloway, Argyll and Bute and Moray councils are planning. They hope to use this to help their staff get a good, shared understanding of what transformational change really means. From four selected to pitch for this work, and some stiff competition, I-Motus has emerged as the supplier of choice. We are now progressing into pre-production activities through June 09 which will progress towards filming by July 09 with an expected deliver date of mid August 09.
For further information on this initiative, please contact Gordon Nelson.
Please tell us if you've used any of these toolkits and if so what you liked/didn't like about them
- Diagnostic Pathway (IS)
- Project, Programme and Change Management toolkit (IDeA)
- Improvement Journey (DCLG Business Improvement Package)
- Business Improvement Package (National Process Improvement Project)
- Developing People Improvement Tools (Improvement Network)
- Shared Services Toolkit (Cabinet Office CIO Council)
- Efficiency Toolkit (National Audit Office)
- Culture and Sport Toolkit for Local Area Agreements (IDeA)
- Drive for Change (Cabinet Office)
- Programme and Change Management CoP (IS)
- Government 2.0 Best Practices (various)
- eGov Register (Brent Council)
