Improvement Service

Engagement

All 32 Scottish councils are now either engaged, in training, implementing or uploading their Public Information Notices to tellmescotland.gov.uk. Eighteen Scottish councils are now uploading their Planning, Licensing, Traffic and/or General Notices. A further seven Scottish councils have also committed to full implementation of the portal, which includes non-statutory notices and other information such as public consultations, events, key reports, school closures, flood alerts, elections and members' surgeries.

The National Entitlement Card (NEC) continues to extend its reach and influence across the wider public sector – with a trio of organisations benefiting from its versatility in recent months.

The Customer Satisfaction Measurement Tool (CSMT) is already established as a leading evaluation framework for Scottish councils – just nine months after its launch.

A new national standard for local government and its partners to evaluate the performance of the services they deliver, the CSMT was designed to create a common framework across Scotland and provide a uniform tool which everyone can use and adhere to.

Almost half of Scotland's councils are now using the CSMT to evaluate a diverse range of services, from homeless services to community centres, assessors service to building standards, and trading standards to waste services.

Customer First continues to make its mark on Scottish local government as it achieves impressive results and enhances the image of councils by helping to deliver improved services through a wide range of key projects.

Providing better, faster and more efficient services for customers is at the heart of everything we do and the benefits of the Customer First programme are visible in all local authorities.

Here are some of our highlights from the last few months...

Scottish councils could make substantial savings as Customer First begins the transformational process of moving more public services online through the development of a national self-service model.

As this innovative programme commences, confidence and inspiration is being drawn from the successful experiences of local authorities in England and America (highlighted below), who have made huge savings through various self-service projects – which involves the integration of several communication channels like email, SMS messaging, mobile apps, Facebook and Twitter.

The new Customer First sub-group has outlined several key priorities as it spearheads an exciting new phase of the programme and reinforces the commitment to producing better, faster and more efficient services for the Scottish public. The sub-group will consider at their next meeting proposals on how these priorities can be taken forward collaboratively.

The Improvement Service has taken responsibility for Customer First after a new sub-group was established to be accountable for the budget, service performance and development programme.

It has been a busy past few months for the Improvement Service's seven graduates and all have made a huge contribution within the organisation.

Since becoming the first members of the groundbreaking Graduate Assistantship Programme in early 2010, the graduates have picked up invaluable skills and experience as they begin their careers in the Scottish public sector.

Local authorities across Scotland have been urged to maximise the potential of the newly-created knowledge management strategy and action plan for social services by embracing all the innovative opportunities it provides.

Launched in mid-March under the title, 'Sharing Knowledge, Improving Practice, Changing Lives', the strategy has been endorsed by the Improvement Service and details the key role knowledge management will play in the future delivery of social services.