2
Customer first
customer in
openscotland
building better services
A strategic framework for the Scottish Executive
and Scottish local authorities 2004-2007
Customer First
Management Overview
Background
‘Core Objective
... to deliver
public services
at first
contact’
1.
The development, and refinement, of the Modernising Government Fund (MGF) priorities
over the last three years led to the ‘Customer in Focus’ programme, delivered by a local
authority led national Consortium, whose core objective is to work together to introduce
business processes which will deliver public services at first contact. In its support for the
programme, the Central Local Government Forum, led by the Minister for Finance and Public
services, recognised that there was a need for this objective, and the overall priorities, to
be set out in a specific strategic document.
2.
The document, which we have called ‘Customer First’, provides a common national
framework which supports councils ( and service partners) in their plans to deliver
consistent and measurable improvements in local customer services. Just as importantly it
sets out how the local authorities can contribute to a national secure data sharing
infrastructure, and at the same time increase the efficiency and reduce some of the costs
of delivering public services. This document is a Management Overview of the larger
‘Customer First’ strategy.
T
F
A
R
D
The Customer in Focus
3.
The ‘Customer in Focus’ programme recognised that local authorities, with community
planning partners and a number of external voluntary and public sector agencies, deliver a
complex range of public services to customers. In many respects the design of these
services has been built around the structure of the organisations, or parts of the
organisation, which provide these services. An early priority, therefore, was to redesign the
business processes to improve the management of the service, but more importantly to
focus the design of the service around the needs of the customer, i.e. customers should not
need to understand the bureaucracy in order to get a service that is ‘joined up’.
what’s inside ...
Background
strategy
●
●
The Customer in Focus
●
What is ‘Customer First’?
Key outputs that underpin ‘Customer First’
benefit from ‘Customer First’?
Savings
●
Standards
●
●
Funding
●
●
The ‘Customer First’
How will the citizen – the customer –
Why is partnership working necessary to support ‘Customer First’?
●
Delivering Excellent Public Services
●
Benefits and
2
openscotland building better services
4.
A further priority is to ensure that the customer is put at the centre of the information
processing cycle and that the concept of a citizen’s account – a single electronic record for
each customer – is developed which provides a transaction history which can be used for
the benefit of the customer and as a means of secure data sharing across service delivery
partners.
5.
Customer in Focus also recognises the policy drive to ensure that services are flexible and
focused and delivered in a way that is convenient to the customer. This includes
extended hours of working, electronic service delivery that provides a number of access
channels for customers, the implementation of a single corporate infrastructure that
underpins all of the available delivery channels and the better management of the core
data that support joined up services.
6.
The aim is to avoid investment in discrete business solutions that can only support one
channel or one service, e.g. online services, or investments within one part of the
organisation unnecessarily duplicated in other parts of the organisation, i.e. multiple
investment in the same technology, or the implementation of solutions which are not
interoperable with other local or national systems.
What is ‘Customer First’?
‘Citizen’s
Account ...
provides a
transaction
history for the
benefit of the
customer and as
a means of
secure data
sharing’
7.
An important lesson from the Customer in Focus programme is recognition that the
modernisation of public services is a large scale, long term process and that within the
context of the MGF it is important to focus down upon a number of core priorities, i.e.
not to spread limited resources too thinly across the wider public sector and across a wide
range of problem solving projects.
8.
Furthermore, to recognise that some of the component parts of the MGF programme –
the electronic service delivery, the multi-channel approach, the use of a single corporate
infrastructure to support contact centres, the development of the citizen’s account
coupled with a voluntary account card (smartcard), linking the account to a common
addressing system – have sometimes been seen as independent projects whose
interdependence within the overall MGF programme was not fully understood.
9.
The Customer First strategy, therefore, is a response to the request from service providers
to concentrate the focus of the MGF on a number of core priorities. It also recognises the
need to communicate this effectively across the board – to the customer, to service
providers and to those who supply goods and services to the public sector.
The ‘Customer First’ strategy
10.
The requirement is for a clear strategic document which sets out - within the constraints
of the MGF - a common framework for all 32 of Scotland’s local authorities (and their
community planning partners) within which everyone can work to improve access to, and
the delivery of, the core services which impact on the everyday lives of citizens, i.e. to
put the customer first in the design and delivery of public services.
openscotland building better services
11.
This strategic framework is to help local authorities develop efficient information systems
that can help staff to respond promptly and effectively to customer enquiries. Local
authorities receive many requests for services and for information, mostly by telephone
or through or face to face contact. Customers expect a quick response but staff who deal
with enquiries do not always have ready access to the relevant customer information.
This can result in customer frustration, dissatisfaction and complaints. The early work in
the Customer in Focus programme has shown that this can be avoided when local
authorities apply technologies which combine the services of multi-skilled front office
staff with access to back office transactional systems, e.g. to provide one-stop shop and
contact centre staff with access to an integrated customer transaction history and core
data such as name, address, property reference, date of enquiry, and service request
reference.
12.
The strategy will also enable local authorities to realise the efficiency gains to be made
by encouraging customers to transact online. Since 2001 councils have been working
steadily towards delivering online information about their services and increasing the
number of transactions that can be carried out online, including the concept of ‘selfservice’. A major challenge now is to grow the self service area of the business and in
turn divert freed up resources for those customers whose needs are more complex and
best met with a greater level of face-to-face contact.
13.
MGF projects have shown that improved services to the citizen are underpinned by
improvements in the business processes and the transaction processes which enable
services to be provided more accurately, quickly and efficiently, and at lower cost. This
is an essential component of the efficient government drive and targets within Customer
First have been set for the delivery – in the longer term – of recurring annual savings of
around £56 million and to realise the potential for further savings from sharing core data
with other parts of the public sector, thereby reducing their data maintenance overheads.
14.
Customer First will also focus upon secure data sharing across the public sector within the
framework of the Local Government in Scotland Act (2003). Local authorities, as a first
point of contact for many services hold information - or a given information by customers
- that is of relevance to other parts of the public sector and where it is in the direct
interest of the customer for this information to be shared, e.g. notification of death,
change of address. In many cases customers themselves expect this information to be
passed on. Whilst we recognise that there is a legal framework within community
planning for sharing data, Customer First will ensure that the sharing of information also
has the explicit consent of customers.
15.
An important part of Customer First will be change management, ensuring that the
necessary culture change is being led from senior management in the public sector.
Senior officials in the Scottish Executive in partnership with a representative group of
Chief Executives will provide the arrangements that will ensure the success of the
programme. Chief Executives under SOLACE will work in partnership with officials in the
Executive to provide the governance, the consortium working arrangements, a national
programme and local project management controls to ensure that Customer First is
effectively managed. Progress reports will be provided to Ministers and made available
to the wider public via the openscotland.gov.uk website.
3
‘enable
services to be
provided more
accurately,
quickly and
effectively –
and at lower
cost’
4
openscotland building better services
Key outputs that underpin ‘Customer First’
16.
The strategy recognises the need for some common local infrastructure requirements
coupled with a nationally driven technical infrastructure to help underpin the service
improvements that are being driven by the local service providers, principally the local
authorities.
17.
All the authorities will work towards an agreed single model of electronic service
delivery and Customer First will provide guidance and to support towards this. The model
recognises that in most instances the first point of contact for public services is the local
authority and he preferred method of contact is the telephone for the time being.
Customer First will provide guidance within which all authorities can develop a contact
centre approach which provides customers with a single point of access for services most
frequently requested by their customers. It will also support a programme to train multiskilled customer services staff to respond to a wider range of service requests.
18.
The requirement for a corporate Customer Relationship Management (CRM) infrastructure
has already been established as a pre-requisite for the contact centre approach.
Customer First will deliver three things to support this concept:
‘need for some
common local
infrastructure …
coupled with a
nationally
driven
infrastructure’
•
it will provide some supporting resources for the ‘pathfinder’ local authorities (the
original authorities who set up the Customer in Focus consortium) to extend the
use of the current infrastructure and the range of services available;
•
it will provide supporting resources to allow the current ‘pathfinder’ CRM solutions
to be adopted by other local authorities, where those authorities have common
legacy systems or common suppliers;
•
where there is a requirement for some authorities to begin a new developmental
approach, i.e. only where it can be demonstrated that the current technical
solutions are inappropriate, supporting resources will be provided for those
authorities to work together to produce a generic CRM platform. The suggested
starting point for this third approach will be to examine the current generic crown
copyright model developed by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) in
collaboration with its pathfinder local authorities.
19.
The overall outcome will be to provide a common template within which all authorities
can manage the roll out of CRM.
20.
A draft schema has been developed for the local and the national implementation of the
citizen’s account. This BS7866 compliant schema will be documented and provided as a
template for all local authorities. It will also be further extended to meet the
requirements of the wider sharing of data across the public sector, as part of the national
infrastructure project. The template will support three approaches:
•
for local authorities to draw down supporting MGF resources to implement a
technical solution that allows the data for the account to be assembled from
existing data sets;
openscotland building better services
21.
23.
24.
•
where assembly of the data is not deemed to be the best local solution, to allow
a ‘physical system’ to be developed which will hold the citizen’s account as a
corporate data set;
•
to ensure that a core set of demographics can be created as a national data set
from which customers can receive a guarantee that important information that
needs to be shared on their behalf, and to provide continuity of service, can be
passed to the wider public sector.
A draft framework has been developed to support local authorities when they wish to
replace all of their current card schemes with a single smartcard solution. The framework
will ensure the voluntary nature of the scheme and provide two key areas of MGF
support:
•
to enable those authorities to continue with the work of rolling out the card to a
wide range of citizens;
•
to set aside provision to ensure that all authorities can draw down resources
towards the costs of the first issue of a card that can support education and
transport services to younger people, i.e. 12 – 26 year olds, and to older people
(and others) who qualify for a national concessionary fares scheme.
22.
The Executive’s Transport Divisions will provide further resources to support the
common infrastructure development with transport providers. The framework also
provides details of how the requirement to add other core services, such as library
and leisure, can be easily incorporated onto the card.
A schema – along with good practice guidelines – has been developed for local
authorities to implement a BS7666 compliant corporate address gazetteer. A ‘first cut’
of this gazetteer containing the definitive customer address is a component part of the
CRM infrastructure as well as providing a critical part of the data set which forms the
citizen’s account (locally and nationally). Customer First will provide a template to ensure
two things:
•
that this schema can be implemented and sustained at the local level;
•
to ensure that the wider benefits of customer addressing can be shared with other
parts of the public sector.
A major part of the Customer in Focus evaluation and the review of MGF applications for
funding has been to identify some of the ‘common denominators’ i.e. what parts of the
programme should be drawn together and led from the centre as part of a national
infrastructure. The outcome from this evaluation has identified the need for MGF support
for four things:
5
‘to support local
authorities
when they wish
to replace all of
their current
card schemes
with a single
smartcard’
6
openscotland building better services
‘common
technologies,
common
solutions ...
pool resources
to achieve
economies of
scale’
25.
26.
•
to provide a national ‘repository’, and a national custodian to provide a ‘hub’
around which key public services data can be accessed and shared (importantly, to
provide a trusted network around which key messages and alerts can be
distributed);
•
that within this trusted network, a common authentication layer can be developed
that ensures – as customer preferences for online eservices grows and as
automated process contribute to the back office re-engineering priorities – a secure
validation and verification process exists which ensures customer confidence in the
security of the network;
•
that, as the move towards self-service progresses, online activities can be
harnessed within a national public access portal, and that within this a common A
– Z of public services (for information or for transacting online) can be provided
through convenient access points;
•
that, where these national repositories provide a platform for common or
managed services, these opportunities are prioritised and exploited as part of the
drive for efficient government.
Suppliers in particular will be interested in working alongside the Customer First
programme to ensure two things:
•
to reduce their overhead in having to deal with a wide ranging group of public
sector bodies who, in many cases, have a common set of requirements;
•
to be aware of the development opportunities in moving towards a stronger
consortium approach to procuring managed services and developing a national
infrastructure that can underpin the services of a large number of public sector
providers.
Finally, Customer First, as a strategic document, will be an important part of the
communication process describing the meaningful outcomes that will accrue from the
MGF programme and
•
customers will be clear about the services and the target levels of improvement;
•
providers will understand the framework and the levels of support that are
available to take the improvement process forward;
•
accountability for delivering the programme will be clearly understood;
•
suppliers of goods and services to the public sector will appreciate their role in
developing the potential for common technologies and common solutions along
with the desire for public sector bodies to pool their respective resources in order
to achieve more economies of scale.
openscotland building better services
7
How will the citizen – the customer – benefit from
‘Customer First’?
27.
The strategy sets out ambitious targets for ensuring that:
•
citizens have a choice on how they transact with local authority services, via the
telephone, face-to-face or online;
•
a national training programme will develop multi-skilled Customer Services Staff
who can deal with a wide range of service requests from the front office, for
example an initial target of training 2500 staff across Scotland would be necessary
to deal with the anticipated volume of customer transactions in the core service
areas;
•
the most frequently requested services are targeted for improvement - with
around 12 million transactions across 46 core services identified for improvement
over the next four years;
•
every citizen who contacts their, or another, local authority will have their call
answered within a reasonable time, with the ultimate target of 100% removal of
‘abandoned’ service calls;
•
citizens will have the majority of their requests for services dealt with at first
contact, with the expectation that 75% of the core service requests can be dealt
with in this way;
•
improved business process will reduce the transaction time – and cost – of
delivering the core services, and business process maps will be produced for all of
the major services and made available for local implementation across all councils
(60 of these business process maps have already been published);
•
customers whose calls need to be referred will not have to repeat their details and
the background to their service requests (which can increase the transaction time,
and cost, by as much as 50%). The development of a single electronic record – a
citizen’s account – and the ability to monitor transactions within that account will
ensure that staff have immediate access to service information and the customers
details;
•
along with their citizen’s account, citizen’s will have the opportunity to receive a
single entitlement card which can replace the multiple, and non-interoperable,
card schemes that currently exist, up to 1.7 million citizens will have the
opportunity to test and evaluate the entitlement card;
•
along with their citizen’s account, customers will have a public services network
that can ensure that changes to their basic circumstances – address change, name
change, notification of death – will be accurately and securely handled, e.g. neither
‘citizens will
have a choice in
how they
transact … the
majority of
service requests
dealt with at
first contact’
8
openscotland building better services
grief nor embarrassment will be caused by sending correspondence to the wrong
person or the wrong address, or to someone who is deceased;
•
through a common A – Z of public services the Scottish Executive, in partnership
with the local authorities, will begin to promote and encourage the take up of
online – self-service – customer transactions. An initial target of 10% has been set
;
•
the ultimate measure of success is the level of customer satisfaction with public
services and a target for customer satisfaction will be established as part of the
MGF programme which supports the strategy (some councils have already set 95%
as the baseline measure).
Why is partnership working necessary to support
‘Customer First’?
‘a consortium of
partners
working
together with
priorities,
timescales,
targets and
templates ….
secure and
lawful data
sharing’
28.
Consultation across Scottish public sector identified to the Minister for Finance and Public
Services that the MGF has provided vital support in providing some of the up-front costs
associated with modernising public services and in evaluating the types of technology
that can support this. It also highlighted that it was now important to present this in the
context of a consortium of partners working within a unified strategic MGF programme
which identified priorities, timescales, targets, templates that local authorities in
particular could use to ensure consistency and continuity across the sector. ‘Customer
First’ provides this partnership framework.
29.
Within the MGF applications for funding and within the local Community Planning
documents there is an overall strategic vision for local authorities and their partners to
exploit the use of information and share access to the data and the information that will
deliver seamless and transparent public services. At the same time there must be an
assurance that there is a proper and lawful basis for data sharing. Data protection is an
objective of modernising government not an obstacle to it. ‘Customer First’ sets out the
strategic priorities for this, and a National Infrastructure programme within the strategy
will underpin secure and lawful data sharing as part of the process of partnership
working.
30.
A high political profile is attached to the management of public sector data and
information and the improvement of public services, not only at the Scottish level but
also at the United Kingdom and European Union level. Customer First sets out how the
use of effective technologies will help to develop the vision of Scotland as a modern
country with modern public services and importantly sets out how Scotland is at the
forefront of delivering citizen focused public services.
31.
Customer First will provide ‘smart successful public services’, and citizens – customers of
those services - who are comfortable in the use of modern technology which can improve
access to, and support the delivery of, modern public services. Customer First supports
the commitment to:
openscotland building better services
•
social inclusion and encouraging citizens to develop the skills to use technology;
•
expanding the use of electronic service delivery – for citizens and for businesses;
•
using technology to develop multi skilled public services staff, ‘expert’ systems to
underpin first time delivery and knowledge management to underpin service
quality.
32.
The traditional methods of developing information systems in the public sector do not
support common developments that can deliver economies of scale and underpin joined
up government services. Local authorities hold large amounts of the same data and
information which is not always valued as a corporate asset (or as an asset to the wider
public sector who have exactly the same customer base). Customer First provides a
framework for partnership investment in common infrastructure which can support
managed services and as well as providing a secure data sharing infrastructure to ensure
that critical ‘life event’ details are shared for the benefit of citizens.
33.
Failure to share information at the local level can reflect badly on all of the public sector,
with accusations of not being joined up, being overly bureaucratic, incurring unnecessary
high cost, poor communication and lower standards of customer service (as well as
having potentially more serious consequences such as the death or abuse of a vulnerable
citizen). By sharing critical information within the context of a secure public sector
partnership, Customer First will help to manage and reduce the risks associated with the
management of personal information across the public sector.
Benefits and Savings
34.
As part of the development of Customer First, the Executive, along with representatives
from local authorities, undertook a preparatory programme to focus upon two things:
•
the core services which make up the most frequently requested services and the
most frequently asked questions;
•
those services which are more likely to benefit from a service re-engineering
process and can bring about efficiencies in the way the service is delivered, and
provide an opportunity for delivery as an online – self-service – transaction.
35.
This preparatory work highlighted 46 core services, ranging from service requests which
are based upon simple information to more detailed financial transactions which involve
information, form filling and payment; through to the more complex delivery of joined
up service incorporating social work, education, housing and health related activity.
36.
The target will be to improve efficiency in the core services, e.g. Blue Badge, Bulk Uplifts,
Housing (benefits, payment repairs), Council Tax (claim or payment), booking a council
facility, fault reporting (pavement, pothole, streetlight.
9
‘to ensure that
critical ‘life
event’ details
are shared for
the benefit of
citizens’
10
‘efficiency
savings … by
moving service
transactions to
a single point of
contact in the
‘front office’
openscotland building better services
37.
A benefits realisation programme has also been carried out and a table has been drawn
together for programme partners setting out specific descriptions and calculations for
both the qualitative and the quantitative – efficiency - benefits that will be delivered (as
well as highlighting the improvements in citizen focused services). Customer First will
refine and develop the initial benefits realisation programme to produce a definitive set
of indicators that everyone is comfortable with, and that can provide a baseline from
which to measure improvements in efficiency and in outcome.
38.
Efficiency savings from Customer First will be achieved by moving service transactions
from the back-office to a single point of contact in the front-office (reducing costs and
overheads in the back office) and allow customers to have their enquiries answered at
the first point of contact.
39.
The costs and benefits analysis for Customer First has focused upon the key service
delivery interests of the local authority sector. However, the NHS and other service
providers in Scotland will benefit, as well as other benefits for the wider public sector and
for the commercial sector.
Standards
40.
41.
Sharing best practice and following common standards that allow interoperability and
cost-effective solutions is a vital part of Customer First and of the wider information and
communication technology strategy for the public sector. In supporting Customer First an
Openscotland Information Age Framework (OSIAF) has been produced by the Executive
to incorporate the Scottish public sectors role in the development of interoperability
standards across Europe and is complementary to the European and UK Frameworks. The
OSIAF provides two important sources of reference:
•
it sets out the standards that are necessary to ensure our compliance with the
overall eGovernment Interoperability Framework;
•
it provides the opportunity to set out the new standards and the new products
(including those developed by the MGF programme) that are unique to the Scottish
public sector.
As well as standards and products the OSIAF also provides additional guidance on the
roles of senior managers, information and communication technology professionals,
project managers, procurement professionals and suppliers.
Funding
42.
This Management Overview has been produced as an introduction to the much larger
Customer First strategic document which sets out more of the detail of the programme,
along with a series of templates which provide the common framework for the
programme partners. The full Customer First strategic document will be published for
comment on the openscotland website and a review of the document will be carried out
before final publication in 2005. The review will also provide an opportunity for Customer
openscotland building better services
11
First partners to review their own local plans and the funding requirements that are
necessary to deliver the overall objectives of the programme.
43.
44.
The Minister for Finance and Public Sector Reform has confirmed the provision of a
funding package totalling £34.55 million to support Customer First. The summarised
details of the funding are:
•
to prioritise support (£13.1m) for those local authorities who have made only a
limited start on any Customer First activity and to allow the ‘pathfinder’ Customer
in Focus partners to further accelerate progress;
•
to link the local property gazetteers to the Assessors portal (£0.6m);
•
to prioritise / test feasibility of a wider range of services to young people, (adding
18 – 26 year olds to the current 12 – 18 scheme) and to extend the offer of the
entitlement card to all older people as part of the roll out of a national
concessionary fares scheme (£6.6m);
•
to encourage and promote the online – self-service - delivery of the core
transactional services (£4.0m);
•
to combine all of the data sharing, national citizen’s account, national addressing,
authentication, electronic service delivery into a common programme for a
‘national data sharing infrastructure’ (£9.5m);
•
to provide (£0.75m) for a programme office and resources to oversee the
programme, including programme office support, business analysis, technical
design, project management and administrative support.
The first £15 million of this programme will be released to the programme partners
before the end of 2004/05. Initially, to support the additional members of the
consortium who need to make an immediate start on new activities, to support the
current members who have an immediate priority to accelerate their activity, to
implement the governance arrangements and to set up the appropriate project
management arrangements. A further £19.55 million provision will be available for
consortium partners to draw down under the direction of the Customer First Programme
Board and its corresponding Project Boards. Payment will be dependent upon progress
against the programme plan.
Contacts
Jim Kinney
21st Century Government Unit
email: jim.kinney@scotland.gsi.gov.uk
‘to encourage
and promote
the take up of
online – selfservice –
delivery’
12
openscotland building better services
Partnership Agreement
Delivering Excellent Public Services
Cutting bureaucracy by:
•
•
Use the citizen’s account to
develop a customer history,
and share that information
securely to improve services.
•
ensuring services are flexible
and focused
•
developing flexible working
and supporting staff
•
ensuring good practice is
shared
•
ensuring the best use of
valuable resources
•
assessing the desirability of
creating a national voluntary
citizen’s entitlement card
•
sharing data and information
across organisational
boundaries
•
improving the public sector
infrastructure
•
•
•
•
•
Move service delivery from
the back office to a single
point of contact front-office
environment
Provide citizens with a single
standardised electronic
customer record – a citizen’s
account
Underpin the citizen’s account
with the issue of a voluntary,
citizen’s entitlement card
•
Use the entitlement card to
prioritise services to younger
people and to older people
(including education and
transport)
Reductions in the number of
times a customer has to
notify the same details to the
service provider
•
Customer satisfaction rating
•
The number of electronic
customer records- citizen’s
accounts – that are introduced
•
The number of voluntary
entitlement cards introduced
•
The use of entitlement cards
to deliver services such as
concessionary fares, healthy
eating, removing the stigma
of free school meals,
combating bullying by
introducing cashless services
and delivering a national
voluntary proof of age
scheme.
•
The volume of online service
/ information requests from
customers
•
The number of changes to
customer circumstances dealt
with at first contact
To develop a sense of citizen
ownership of their data and
build public confidence in
how public bodies manage
service information and
personal data
To improve the management
of personal data by
implementing a BS7666
compliant national address
gazetteer and to introduce a
single point of contact for
change of address in the
public sector
•
To use the citizen account to
build a set of ‘real time’
demographic data which
enhances the ability to
develop policy and target
resources more effectively
Train front-line customer
services staff to deal with a
wide range of customer
enquiries
Provide an electronic
infrastructure that can
support the ‘first time’
delivery of service requests
and improve the take up of
online (self- service)
transactions
Reductions in the number of
times customers are
‘referred’ on to someone or
some other place in the
system,
•
Customer First Strategy will:
•
•
•
Maintain a public sector
extranet service to spread
good practice
Customer First will monitor
and measure:
•
Customer transaction volumes
by each service delivery
channel and service requests
dealt with ‘first time’