Three Scottish councils - East Renfrewshire, South Lanarkshire and Fife - have been testing esd-toolkit's Cost Architecture Model, a local government-developed tool which allows the value of the components of existing processes to be compared with proposed changes.
Through a combination of workshops, fieldwork to gather financial data, staff awareness and consensus sessions and process mapping exercises, the pilot councils have been applying the Cost Architecture Model to a range of local business improvement projects.The pilots are being carried out within Registration Services, Licensing and Trade Waste.
With most of the pilots fairly advanced, the councils are looking to conclude the fieldwork in mid-December. Case studies summarising the findings and lessons learned are anticipated from the end of the year.
Opportunities to share the pilot findings more widely within Scotland with a range of stakeholders - and to highlight the Cost Architecture Model - are now being actively examined beginning with the first Scottish Toolkit Local Community event in January 2010.
Whilst keen to avoid losing sight of the principal objective of applying the Cost Architecture Model against real case scenarios, the collaborative working inherent to these pilots has provided significant informal, yet nonetheless valuable, benchmarking and learning opportunities for examples of good practice to be elicited.
More Information
If you are interested to learn more about the pilots as they move forward, please contact Graeme McWilliams or Martin Brown.
Visit esd toolkit's Scottish community to find out more about the Cost Architecture Model.
