Scottish Government
Strategic Business Case /
mygov.scot and public service transformation /
Digital Public Services and Business Transformation

Distribution

Name / Title
Mike Neilson / Director, Digital, SG
Robbie Parish / Deputy Director, Online Services & Strategy, SG
Jane Morgan / Deputy Director, Digital Public Services, SG
Marcia Rankin / Head of Transformation, Online Services & Strategy, SG
Calum Shepherd / Head of Digital Strategy, Online Services & Strategy, SG
Fiona McGowan / Head of Business Management, Online Services & Strategy, SG
Keith Johnson / Head of Digital Architecture, Online Services & Strategy, SG
Greg Kozakiewicz / Head of User Insight, Online Services & Strategy, SG
John Cook / Accountant in Bankruptcy
Eddie Turnbull / Head of eHealth, Scottish Government
Jane Martin / Director of Marketing & Communications, Scottish Enterprise
Lynne Huckerby / Head of health Information Services, NHS 24
Malcolm Roughead / CEO, Visit Scotland)
Ian Marchant
Robin Wright / Director of Health Information & Technology at Greater Glasgow & Clyde Health Board
John Booth / Head of marketing & Corporate Communications, DG Strategy & External Affairs
Louise MacDonald / Chief Executive, Young Scot
Professor Russell Griggs OBE / Scottish Enterprise Board
Irene McKelvey / Head of IT, North Lanarkshire Council
David Wilson / Director, Communications & Ministerial Support, Scottish Government
John Turner / Chief Executive, NHS 24
Mike Beaven / Transformation Programme Director, UK Government Digital Services
Claudette Jones / Chief Information Officer, City of Edinburgh Council

1Table of Contents

2THE STRATEGIC CASE

3THE NEED

4WHY INTERVENTION IS NEEDED

4.1Dis-benefits of intervention

4.2Results of not intervening

4.3Proposal and conclusion

5SCOPE OF INTERVENTION AND TIMELINE FOR BENEFITS REALISATION

5.1Benefits Realisation Planning

6OUTCOMES AND OBJECTIVES

7OPTION APPRAISAL

7.1Option 1 – Minimum option

7.2Option 2 – Production of a framework of standards and guidelines and implementation of a programme of transformation to support service redesign across the Scottish Public Sector

7.3Option 3 – Create a central point of access to public services in Scotland

7.4Option 4 – Combined delivery of options 2 and 3

7.5Option 5 – Utilising the GDS platform and endorsing gov.uk standards and guidelines across the Scottish Public Sector

7.6Option 6 – Sectoral Approaches

8SELECTING THE BEST OPTION

9REFINEMENT INTO A SOLUTION

9.1Approach to Public Sector

9.2Approach to Delivery

10THE MANAGEMENT CASE

11APPENDICES

11.1Case Study – Citizen Benefit of Service Redesign

11.2Example 1 – Channel shift to digital for transactional services

11.3Example 2 – Website Rationalisation

2THE STRATEGIC CASE

Overview

The key strategic business case for mygov.scot and transformation will deliver on national outcome 16:

Our public services are high-quality, continually improving, efficient and responsive to local needs.

A Strategy for Scotland

Scotland’s Digital Future - A Strategy for Scotland[1], published in March 2011, sets out the Scottish Government’s overall digital ambition for Scotland covering four themes: connectivity, public services, digital economy and participation.

National Strategy for digital public services

In March 2011, the McClelland Review[2] provided a number of recommendations on how best to deliver improved value for money, and support multi-agency working and shared services.

Building on this, the strategy for digital public services, Scotland’s Digital Future - Delivery of Public Services[3], published in September 2012, and endorsed by all parts of the Scottish public sector, sets out a vision where Scotland is a country in which:

  • digital technology provides a foundation for innovative, integrated public services that cross organisational boundaries and deliver to those in most need, and for services for business that promote growth
  • digital technology captures patterns of service use and feedback, so that users of public service are more directly involved in service design and improvement
  • this use of digital technologies provides a firm basis for a shared commitment to, and responsibility for, public services.

It includes a specific commitment in relation to mygov.scot:the Scottish Government would work with partners to delivera single – but not exclusive – point of entry to all digital public services at national and local level, giving people in Scotland a clear view of the services available to them, no matter which organisation provides them.

Other strategies informing our work

In line with the objectives of the national strategy, the central government strategy Scotland’s Digital Future - Delivery of Public Services, Central Government Strategy[4], published in February 2013, supports public service reform that focuses on achieving outcomes while becoming more efficient.

The continued development of the Scottish Business Portal as part of the mygov.scot programme will contribute to the delivery of the Government Economic Strategy[5], published in September 2011, through commitments to create a supportive business environment and an effective government.

The Local Government ICT Strategy - Delivering Better Services for Communities[6], published in January 2013, takes the main themes and links them to the future direction of local government, taking into account the Christie Review and the opportunity for digital services at a time of tight financial constraints. The local government vision is for public services that are high quality, continually improving, efficient and responsive to local people’s needs.

The Further and Higher Education ICT Strategy[7], published in 2013, sets out a shared vision for ICT in the sector. This strategy will ensure an inclusive approach and will aim to position Scotland, not only as one of the best educators in the world, but as one of the most modern and efficient practitioners of education supported and enhanced by technology.

The eHealth Strategy 2011 – 2017[8] was published in September 2011, before the National Digital Strategy. It sets out how the Scottish Government willwork with the Customer First Programme on areas of infrastructure which can be shared with the NHS. This strategy is currently undergoing a refresh.

3THE NEED

Current digital landscape

Citizens are demonstrating their desire to use digital services by purchasing digital devices. With this comes the expectation that digital services will be accessible 24/7.

The Scottish Household Survey (2012) states that over three-quarters of Scottish households report having home Internet access (76 per cent.) This illustrates a steady year-on-year increase when compared with previous figures from similar studies.

The ways in which people access the internet are increasingly diverse with the proportion of those accessing the internet on a mobile phone increasing from 14 per cent in 2011 to 25 per cent in 2012.

Ofcom’s Communications Market Report 2013 confirms the increasing digital trend wherein over half of adults (51 per ent) now own smartphones, almost double the proportion of two years ago (27 per cent). At the same time tablet ownership has also more than doubled in the past year, rising from 11 per cent of homes to 24 per cent.

Since 1 January 2014:

  • 63 per cent of visits to GOV.UK have come from a desktop orlaptopdevice
  • 23 per centfrom a mobiledevice and
  • 14 per centfrom a tablet,whichreflects the Scottish Household Survey findingsabove.

Challenge

There is a growing trend of utilising digital devices on the move and in short bursts. This leads to an expectation that services should be provided in a way that makes this both possible and secure.

Designing and developing solutions to meet these changing needs and demands of users and their respective devices is becoming a complex challenge for public service providers.

It is recognised that digital delivery of services creates opportunities for increased take-up, cost efficiencies and improved service delivery. However,this places significant pressure on the providers of our public services to deliver them and acquire the specialist skills to design and maintain them.

The costs of experienced digital staff with the appropriate skills are regularly too high for public service providers to attract in competition with the flourishing private sector market. The cost of not staying abreast of this changing landscape is also costly and is leading to citizendissatisfaction.

Current Issues

The SOCITM Better Connected 2014 Report highlights that:

“Overall satisfaction with the experience of using a council website is a key indicator that we have continued to track in 2013. The average figure was 28.64 per cent (calculated by subtracting the percentage of those dissatisfied from those who are satisfied). This is a 6% drop in satisfaction from last year’s figure of 33.91 per cent.”

“The main factor in the drop in performance has been the poorer mobile experience. Only 33 per cent passed our general assessment of the mobile experience and, in addition, tasks tested using mobile devices have performed half as well as those using desktop devices.”

Search engines, such as Google, are frequentlya starting point for a user’s journey when accessing information. However due to the fractured nature of public sector information, users have to negotiate a landscape of information across a variety of websites. These websites are all of varying quality and in many cases offer a poor experience.

This can lead to frustration, disparateuser journeys andis a missed opportunity to minimise avoidable contact.Avoidable contact could increase costs within traditional, high-cost channels such as face-to-face and telephone.

In addition, the visibility of Scottish public sector websites in search engines varies greatly, impacting the opportunity for users to efficiently find specific Scottish services online.

A wide range of top level domains are used across the public sector, i.e. .gov.uk, .org, .com, .co.uk, which results in a fragmented approach and consequently a lack of trust by users, which increases the incoherence of the landscape for users.

Approach to Change

The majority of public sector organisations, in the absence of clear support and guidance, have adopted business case models where each organisation tackles common challenges in isolation. The business cases make financial and business sense, as most are built on replacing an existing system or utilising a new channel to provide information or a service (e.g. mobile and tablet). However, the needs of users often cross organisation and sector boundaries. Thus, an organisation-by-organisationapproach canresultin inconsistent and sub-optimal user journeys.

There are many aspects of the current organisational approach that could be improved.

There are no common public sector standards or any consistent approaches to technical development, design or usability. This canmake improvements in one organisation incompatible or inconsistent withimprovements in another.

Procurements of similar systems are commonly replicated across the public sector resulting in duplication of effort, missed opportunities for economies of scale and multiple contractual agreements of varying lengths and terms.

There is a common over-reliance on the private sector to bridge the skills gap in digital development rather than collaboration and effective utilisation of the skills and expertise that exist throughout the public sector, causing a marked cost increase in digitalprojects.

4WHY INTERVENTION IS NEEDED

Potential benefits arising from an intervention are significant and varied. They include benefits for citizens and businesses that are measurable, societal benefits that are difficult to quantify and cost efficiencies for public sector organisations in the way public services are delivered.

To organise benefits and show alignment with overarching policy objectives, it is useful to reference the framework for assessing benefits for the digital public services strategy, described below.

Overall policy objective 1 – Are we meeting the needs of our citizens & businesses?

Initiatives in this area relate to improving the current situation and aim to produce significant cultural change. Outcomes are concerned with making digital channels more appealing for both current and future users of public services.The specific outcomes that will be tracked by the mygov.scot programme are:

  • Public services are simpler to use
  • Improvedfindability of public services
  • Improvedquality of public services
  • Improved trust of digital public services in Scotland
  • Improvedconvenience of access to public services

The effect of these outcomes could be twofold:

  1. Improvementsincludingtime savings, reducedfrustration, increased confidence and increasedconvenience for users of public services in Scotland.

Benefitsthatuserswillexperience are commonlydifficult to measuredirectlyas they are qualitative. However, improvements in this area willmeetthe growing expectations of citizens and businesses in Scotland and make digital thechannel of preference.

To outline the potential in this area, the example in Appendix A, shows the impact on users in terms of time-savings and reduced frustrationthrough the successful redesign of an ineffective service. Essentially this is an example of transactional service redesign, but it demonstrates the intangible nature (in measurement terms) that some improvements can have on user well-being.

  1. Make digital services more appealing to users who traditionally use other channels or who frequently utilise other channels to support online use.

This could lead to increased use of digital services which benefits from a much lower transaction cost, relative to more expensivechannels such as face to face and telephone. The collective term for this behaviour is channel shift.

Data around changes in citizen behaviour when engaging with public services, particularly in relation to channel shift, provides valuable evidence of the benefits of service redesign. However the main driver of the initiatives within this policy area have the aim of producinga simple, consistent, and effective way of doing things with Government online.

The UK Government digital division GDS, identified 4 Key Performance Indicators that define their approach to service performance monitoring:

  1. Digital take-up: how many transactions are completed online?
  2. Cost per transaction: how much does it cost to provide each transaction?
  3. User satisfaction: how highly do citizens rate a service?
  4. Completion rate: how many people start a transaction and then drop out?

Understanding the citizen benefits beyond savings to the public purse of the mygov.scot programme will require that we drawprimarily onKPI 3 –as this demonstrates satisfaction levels with public service delivery.

GDS use the other KPIs as measures for transactional services. mygov.scot will be the foundation to underpin widespread improvement in redesign of transactional services across the Scottish public sector. Therefore KPIs 3 and 4 will be applicable as they embrace citizen engagement.

Overall policy objective 2 – Are we achieving financial and carbon savings?

There are twoaspects to this objective: citizen experience, which has been discussed in the previous section, and modernising the approach to service delivery. This policy objective primarily concerns maximisingthe on-goingefficiency of delivering services.This could be achieved in many different ways, from driving efficiencies at local leveland sector levels, to fundamental change in approach at a national level.

mygov.scot lends itself to a fundamental changeat national level for citizens by removingorganisational boundaries online, and is a facility through which the wider public sector can collaborate to realise efficiencies inthe delivery of information.

Outcomes that will be tracked by the mygov.scot programme under this policy objective are concerned with savings in operating costs of delivering services and specifically by consolidating the use of systems, so the costs of delivery can be shared amongst several organisations. The specific outcome is:

  • Consolidation of systems used across the public sector for service delivery

A potential KPI that can be used to measure improvement is reduction in running cost of systems used for service delivery online. We regularly undertake activity to baselinecostsof service delivery in order to provide meaningful measures and benefits as a result of introducing mygov.scot.

To outline the potential in this area, the example in Appendix C outlines the average cost of maintaining the web portfolio at an organisational level and shows an estimated impact in terms of cost efficiency of consolidation, removing duplication where possible and introducing collaboration with mygov.scot.

Overall policy objective 3 – Are we enabling joined up public services?

Outcomes to meet this policy objective primarily concern increasing synergy and alignment of services delivered online across different public sector organisations.

Outcomes under policy objectives 1 and 3 have similar objectives.However policy objective 3 makes a clear call for a national approach to service delivery and a removal of organisational boundaries online where it is considered counterproductive to a gooduser experience and efficient service delivery.

It is proposed that by standardising tools to deliver services, i.e. a publishing platform, it wouldbe less challenging to up-skilland maintain aworkforce to deliver onour ambitions. There will also be a greater potential to reuse technical skills and knowledge in the future as staff move between different public sector organisations. This aspect is discussed further in the next section.

The outcome of ‘improving alignment’will lead to increased standardisation of service delivery across the public sector. This will help to provide a better experience for users, as many user journeys cross organisation and sector boundaries.

The specific outcome that will be tracked by the mygov.scot programme is:

  • The landscape of public services is more coherent

A possible KPI that will be used to measure improvement is user satisfaction.

Over time improvements in this area, alongside the outcomes detailed under policy objective 1, could be a contributing factor to channel shift. GDS use digital take-up as a metric to track channel shift, and it iscalculated by dividing the total number of all transactions by the number of completed digital transactions in a calendar month.

An illustration of the potential of channel shift is provided in Appendix C. It should also be acknowledged that there are many other factorsout-with themygov.scot programme that influence channel shift, including broadband coverage.

Overall policy objective 4 – Are we developing our staff to deliver our ambitions?

It is envisaged that the Digital Public Services and Business Transformation division will establish a centre of excellence in digital development within Government that can be utilised to support organisations as they carry out service redesign. The benefit of this approach will be a more efficient use of scarce resource that is skilled in the latest digital development approaches, like agile, and therefore less reliance on outsourcing to agencies and expensive contractors.