The Improvement Service is the national improvement organisation for local government in Scotland, with a mission to help councils and partners improve the health, quality of life and opportunities of all people in Scotland. Supporting Digital is one of four outward-facing programmes around which the Improvement Service is organised.
Operating under the Digital Public Services (DPS) banner, the programme comprises of a portfolio of products and services which help councils and partners deliver high-quality digital public services aimed at producing efficiency savings and providing sustainable front line local services and better customer experiences:
- myaccount the secure authentication service operated and managed by Improvement Service with Scottish Government funding, sits at the portfolio’s heart.
- Parentsportal.scot – enabling and creating a digital relationship between parents, pupils and schools and improving the way that schools engage with parents
- Data Hub – an online data matching and cleansing service for the Scottish public sector
- One Scotland Gazetteer – an address dataset that comprises upto-date address data in a single location, maintained by Scotland’s 32 local authorities
- Bisaccount.scot – Connecting businesses to online public services through secure authentication
- Spatial Hub – an online resource providing a single point of access to quality-assured Scottish local authority data in a consistent format
- Tellmescotland – Scotland’s national public information notices portal, allowing public notices from across Scotland to be published in a single online location
- IS Secure – a secure file sharing system for the Scottish public sector
Altogether, the portfolio supports digital transformation nationally within Scotland.
The challenge
In August 2018, Improvement Service appointed four technology partners - Tata Consultancy Services, Brightsolid, Wallet.Services and Yoti - to develop myaccount and the DPS platform to:
- maintain current services
- develop and exploit new technologies
- deliver innovation up to Levels 3 and 4 (explained in this article)
- maintain legal and privacy compliance.
What did we do?
First, to lay the foundations for fresh capabilities and innovations, our seven existing applications within the DPS portfolio were migrated to a new cloud infrastructure In a range of Scottish firsts:
- We integrated our technology and digital platform with Yoti, a global digital ID app, allowing users to put their ID on their smartphone.
- Users can now link their myaccount to their Yoti account to create a verified digital identity, proving their age and entitlement, online and offline.
- Users can register/log into their myaccount without username or password using biometrics (facial recognition and fingerprint reading technology)
- Better experiences are being provided for those comfortable using smartphone technology * New national online services being developed:
- Apply online for National Entitlement Card (NEC)
- Smart proof of age/entitlement
- Digital NEC displayable on mobile device, allowing users to claim entitlements & discounts ‘smartly’.
We tested out blockchain’s potential to streamline citizen experience, deploying blockchain to exchange attributes, hold attestations e.g. proof of disability.
We have supported younger applicants or those who don’t own identity documents such as a passport, driving licence etc. to gain assured identities, using remote ‘in-person’ proofing deploying video technologies.
Strategic partnerships and joint developments with SEEMiS and Young Scot are creating ground-breaking developments:
- parentsportal.scot is creating a digital relationship between parents, pupils & schools, replacing the schoolbag run with direct digital communications.
- From June 2019, the new Young Scot customer experience platform will, for the first time, bring rewards and discounts under the same roof - via myaccount login – offering user personalisation and improved management information
These directly support the Programme for Government’s objectives — transport poverty and inequality, parental engagement and attainment, health and wellbeing.
We launched a new user interface (for myaccount), adding new features to improve user experiences and meet user/service provider feedback.
We launched bisaccount, to securely connect businesses to online public services, and IS Secure, a secure file-sharing system.
The benefits
- Improving services: achieved year-on-year portfolio-wide adoption growth meaning the simplification of service delivery as well as expanding the number of available online services, benefitting councils and partners by streamlining service delivery; growing the number of services powered by our products.
- Improving data, spatial and address quality: 17 national and new datasets completed and published; 6.85m records uploaded to Data Hub for data matching and analysis (2018); 19,000 public information notices uploaded to TellmeScotland (2018); 1m searches on OneScotland Gazetteer’s website (2018); reimbursed £250,000 to Scottish councils for data improvements.
- Expansion: Seven live services migrated seamlessly to new cloud infrastructure in under three months; organisations on-board have expanded across the portfolio; Parentsportal.scot live with six online services; online services available to myaccount subscribers expanded to more than 200; introduced two new products with more to follow.
- Delivered on time and within budget.
- Able to develop and exploit new technologies, delivering innovation with our partners
- Service availability maintained with 99.89% availability
- Legal and regulatory compliance maintained
- Subscriber numbers expanded e.g. myaccount, + 74% (2018), 750,000+ (April 2019)
- Selected by Scottish Government Digital Identity Scotland Programme for two alpha projects, examining options for individuals to demonstrate ID online.
We have just used myaccount as the single authentication gateway to our new Online Revenues and Benefits system, both to provide additional data security assurance and to offer other personalised online services to our myaccount subscribers. We have significantly grown our numbers of myaccount users (now over 8000) in the past two months.
To find out more about our range of digital public services
Email: digitalpublicservices@improvementservice.org.uk
Follow: @DPS_ImprovServ