Scotland, Shared Services, Public Sector, Transformation

Shared Services aides public sector transformation in Scotland

With England heavily promoting shared services in the public sector, Scotland has taken notice and instituted the Futures Project, a comprehensive transformational plan. The Scottish Executive’s ('the devolved government for Scotland') ambition is for world class public services in Scotland which are designed around the people who need and use them. The Executive aims to invest in and redesign Scotland’s public services around five key values: increased personalization and choice; quality and innovation; efficiency and productivity; joining-up; and accountability.

Shared services is a key part of the Executive’s reform agenda.  Scotland is a small country with about 200 public bodies, the value of each organization having its own corporate support functions such as human resources, facilities and estates, finance and ICT needs to be carefully considered.  The project also sees significant scope for standardization and shared arrangements across many of the common operational processes and systems that underpin its front line services.

The aim is to develop shared business support functions and common business processes that are more independent of the traditional structures and boundaries that exist within the public sector.  This will allow the government to achieve significant efficiency gains by freeing up resources across the whole public sector which can be ploughed back into improving customer service and frontline service delivery.  It will allow public service delivery organizations to focus on service delivery to the citizen.

Preparatory work is underway which will map the Scottish public sector’s ICT infrastructure.  A scoping study is being undertaken to inform future policy decisions, identify potential areas of duplication and provide a base line from which future improvements to the public sector’s ICT infrastructure can be measured.

To support the drive towards a joined-up and shared infrastructure the Scottish Executive has published a revised Openscotland Information Age Framework (OSIAF).  The OSIAF sets out standards, specifications and guidance for the public sector and it provides a Scottish framework for developing and approving interoperability specifications that support the delivery of public services.

The OSIAF is a crucial foundation for achieving joined-up and shared public services, where systems are developed collaboratively and good practice is shared.  Interoperability is not something that is confined to systems development; it has to be a crucial element of how we develop our architecture in terms of the people, the processes and the technology together.

The Executive is engaged with its public service delivery partners at all levels to facilitate the effective reform of its public services.  It is believed that this approach is making a real difference to citizens and communities.

Source: eGov monitor  
By Craig Russell, Head of Efficient Government Delivery Division, Scottish Executive