Improvement Service

SUPPORT, ADVICE AND ASSISTANCE QUESTIONS

•    Can I benchmark with other PSIF organisations?

The sharing of best practice and benchmarking is actively encouraged amongst PSIF practitioners.  This is facilitated through specific PSIF events throughout the year and via the PSIF Project Team at the Improvement Service. The PSIF Partnership is further developing its approach to Quality Assurance, a key aspect of which will be more formal benchmarking.

•    What is on offer with regards to ongoing support for PSIF?

Organisations will receive support from the PSIF partnership throughout the process, including regular progress meetings with an officer from the PSIF Project team at the IS.

The PSIF question set is accompanied by a standard set of materials and supporting systems to ensure a common language and approach for PSIF organisations.

Through involvement with the PSIF community, you will also have the opportunity to network, benchmark and share best practice with the other organisations that are implementing PSIF. This is achieved through:

- Bespoke West of Scotland PSIF Practitioners meetings (held every 2 months) - provides organisations with the opportunity to discuss experiences, difficulties and share best practice with other PSIF practitioners.
- PSIF learning events – scheduled throughout the year and focus on specific parts of the framework, wider links with national initiatives or other frameworks and bodies and practical implementation guidance.
- PSIF Community of Practice – enables PSIF practitioners to communicate online with the rest of the PSIF community and fully benefit from all of the learning from past and current PSIF organisations, in a secure and protected environment.

•    What is the e-tool?  What does it do?

The usage of the e-tool within the PSIF assessment can be very beneficial. It:
•    Removes the hassle of using paper based sheets
•    Has a good reporting function
•    Gives the opportunity to localise and customise the system to fit the organisation’s needs
•    Can be used both for internal and external benchmarking if desired

The e-tool is web based and was developed by Quality Scotland.  There is a standard charge of £4,500 to create your personalised e-tool for your organisation and thereafter there is a maintenance charge of £500 per annum. 

It is useful to have a member of the Core Team who can provide support on technical issues to all the e-tool users on how to use the system.

Evidence can be pre-populated on the E-tool as prompts.  It can also be useful but not essential to create a Library Document with web links of the Corporate Documents which would be used as evidence.

E-tool passwords can be tailored to give restricted access to only the relevant criterion parts being worked on by groups to avoid any mistakes / deletion of information.