All councils are facing change on some level. The pressure to make increasing efficiency savings whilst improving outcomes, changing demographics and policy commitments – all combine to make it imperative for councils to plan and implement sometimes major changes across their organisations.
The Scottish Programme and Change Management (PCM) Group is made up of the people doing just that. It originally grew out of the Diagnostic Pathway, an IS-led programme that enabled councils to identify opportunities for efficiency savings and service improvements through simplifying, standardising and sharing.
"After the Diagnostic there was an interest in sharing around change, change management skills and good practice. The Community of Practice (CoP) grew out of that," explains lead facilitator David Amos.
Originally made up of the councils and people involved in the Diagnostic, the group has grown beyond its roots and now has 148 members across all Scottish councils and other public sector bodies involved in delivering change and transformation. It aims to be a reference point for people looking for guidance and good practice on programme and change management. Resources on the CoP include toolkits, case studies, reports, articles and business cases arranged around specific themes such as benefits realisation, customer engagement, property and asset management, human resources and flexible, mobile and home working. Additional resources include links to other useful sites, discussions and members' blogs.
"We have established a strong platform; we now need to maximise its value for our members," says Amos. That involves providing networking and learning opportunities such as offline events – a PCM event on benefits realisation was held in November 2009 – and online ones such as 'hot seats' (where an expert takes the hot seat for a week and can be questioned by CoP members).
The PCM Group has also recently established links with the Project and Programme Management (PPM) Community – a much larger, UK-wide group which was recently named 'CoP of the Year'. This links allows the Scottish group to access material from the PPM Community whilst retaining its intimacy and Scottish context.
On future plans – "The most common question we're asked is 'who's doing what'," says Amos. "We would really like the CoP to provide that information. We hope this will help identify people working in similar areas and lead to sub groups around specific topics and more collaboration."
He also wants to extend the membership beyond project/programme managers and change managers to include other colleagues supporting change - such as finance, human resources and communications.
For more information on the Scottish Programme and Change Management Group, visit http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk/c/888150/home.do
