The pilot hopes to help participating councils better understand costs, identify opportunities for savings and to allow the value of different access channels to be understood.
Two workshops have been held with the three councils focused on guiding the pilot councils through familiarisation with the Cost Architecture Model and, more specifically, on refining the scope of the business improvement projects against which they plan to apply the Cost Architecture Model.
South Lanarkshire Council
South Lanarkshire Council's pilot will focus on the Council's Registration Service and, specifically, the issue of Extracts, Citizenship Ceremony Administration, and Genealogy Searches and Enquiries across a range of the Council's geographical boundaries.
The Council has opted to focus on these aspects as they represent non-standard areas of registration and policy and legislative changes mean that the service workload might alter in the near future. The Council, too, is currently developing a genealogy service business model.
All key stakeholders, including the union, Unison, have been identified at the outset to ensure they are engaged and have input at all key stages.
Through the project sponsor, Geraldine McCann and the project team, two keys steps are being taken forward in September - financial data collection and a staff awareness and consensus session leading to value analysis being available by mid October 2009. The Council plans to be in a position to publish a case study and pilot evaluation report by end of November 2009.
East Renfrewshire Council
By way of contrast and in keeping with the Council's six corporate principles for excellence in service delivery, East Renfrewshire Council has selected two diverse services - Licensing and Trade Waste - around which it plans to take forward its pilot.
Trade Waste
The Council has already made significant progress in profiling the Trade Waste Uplift Demand by types to quantify value and failure demand and in documenting the business processes in place.
Through the pilot, the Council hopes to be in position to re-design and streamline the processes in a way that will lead to cost savings and efficiencies as well as enhanced service levels,
Licensing
In common with all councils, East Renfrewshire Council has a statutory duty to oversee the issue of licenses including to taxi drivers, street traders and skin piercing studios.
With a particular focus on taxi licenses, East Renfrewshire's pilot will use the demand review analysis of applications which has already revealed valuable channel usage data.
From the pilot, the Council hopes to identify efficiency and utilisation opportunities, cost savings and revenue generation opportunities.
Fife Council
Emerging from the diagnostic in 2008, many Scottish councils identified changing workstyles as a key way of reducing costs, recognising efficiency savings and delivering improved outcomes.
Mobile and flexible working is now becoming a key strand through many councils' transformation agendas and as an acceptable way to reduce or rationalise property assets.
Fife Council's improvement project will focus on this area and is presently assembling the team to refine the exact scope of the services and improvement project against to which it will specifically apply the cost architecture model.
Supporting the Pilots
Together with the esd-toolkit, the Improvement Service is pleased to be working with the three pilots to provide support at workshops, on-line forums, telephone and other support, where required.
What's Next
The next stage includes a workshop for the pilot councils on 16th November 2009 to review individual progress in each of the pilots and this will be underpinned by individual sessions with each of the three councils around their specific improvement projects.
Contacts and More Information
If you are interested to learn more about the pilots as they move forward, please contact Graeme McWilliams at East Renfrewshire Council or Martin Brown at the Improvement Service, or visit esd toolkit's Scottish community.
You can find out about the Cost Architecture Model at http://www.esd.org.uk/esdtoolkit/Communities/BPM/ContentView.aspx?ContentType=Content-335
