Has the light at the end of the tunnel been turned off to save money?

Training budgets slashed?

Conferences a 'no - no'?

Struggling to keep up with new initiatives?

esd-toolkit can help.

Our new look TLCs (Toolkit Local Communities) are designed around what you tell us is important. Attending one of these events can keep you up with what’s going on without costing an arm and a leg........because they are free!!!

There is one TLC in each of the nine English regions and one in Scotland throughout the year so check the events calendar to find out your nearest or most convenient.

These are FREE training events and because we have such a varied agenda for the day and don't want anyone to miss out, we are welcoming subscribers from all regions at any event!

Have you got multiple copies of the same records across different departments?

Are you keeping paperwork longer than you need to?

How confident are you that you keep the records you’re legally required to and can lay your hands on them when required?

Are you making use of standards other councils have put in place or doing everything from scratch?

Well none of us is perfect, but we can improve by seeing what other councils are doing and raising problems that others might have already solved. That's what esd-toolkit's workshop on Implementing an Information Management Strategy based on standard lists to improve the efficiency of records handling is all about.

The wave of quick changes to the local authority reporting and inspection regime have left many unclear about what the future is for benchmarking performance.

The Comprehensive Area Assessment process is gone, as are many of the indicator- and process-based inspections, to be replaced by a slimmed down inspection regime concentrating on quality in schools, social care, and delivering value for money from budgets.  Large numbers of Audit Commission staff have been stood down until the replacement process is clear.

At the same time the government has indicated strongly that the current National Indicator reporting regime will be dismantled to be replaced by local decisions on what indicators they will monitor and self publish. The army of national auditors is being replaced by an army of armchair auditors.

 It might be the holiday season but esd-toolkit is not on vacation.  Instead the team has been working hard to bring you the first European Conference on customer profiling and service lists.

With a growing audience both in the UK and abroad, esd-toolkit’s reputation for customer profiling and its use of standards is escalating. 

This FREE one day event takes place in Cambridge on Thursday 21 October 2010.

The Local Government Group is putting together a list of individuals from local authorities who will have the responsibility for collating and publishing council spending and contracts over £500. If you will be leading on this for your authority please email transparency@local.gov.uk with your contact details. If you have already published the data we would be grateful if you could include a link in your email to us (support@esd.org.uk) advising us of the web location of the spending and contracts data that you may have already published.

Did you respond to the Coalition Government’s request for ideas from public sector workers on the ‘Spending Challenge’?

This article contains one such response to this approach to gathering ideas from public sector workers via the Spending Challenge site (which is now closed).

The author told us that she used this submission to recommend more of what the esd-toolkit does to harness the abilities of in-house staff to analyse and resolve public service challenges.

In her view, there exists an idea about a centralised database of skills as an alternative to hiring consultants. Although a good idea, she thinks this is a bureaucratic solution to a more dynamic problem and would be less flexible than what esd-toolkit already does.

Wednesday 6th October 2010 • 9.00am to 4.00pm • Rich Mix, London E1

Save the Date! You are invited to register for a place at the 'See IT in Action - Efficient Services, Improved Lives' market place event. The event will demonstrate good practice in using technology to deliver effective and efficient frontline services (to the most vulnerable communities)

With councils facing new challenges and tighter financial settlements, squeezing current operations isn’t going to be enough - innovation and the re-shaping of public service delivery is required to enable smarter working and improve productivity. The use of modern design and engagement tools will support public service deliverers to:

• develop a more coordinated approach to proactive service delivery,
• improve social well-being within our vulnerable communities,
• target resources efficiently to minimise down-stream costs and
• provide the transparent evidence required for public scrutiny.

Have you got multiple copies of the same records across different departments?

Are you keeping paperwork longer than you need to?

How confident are you that you keep the records you’re legally required to and can lay your hands on them when required?

Are you making use of standards other councils have put in place or doing everything from scratch?

Well none of us is perfect, but we can improve by seeing what other councils are doing and raising problems that others might have already solved.  That’s what esd-toolkit’s workshop on Implementing an Information Management Strategy based on standard lists to improve the efficiency of records handling is all about.

esd-toolkit’s Sheila Apicella and Govmetric’s Nic Streatfeild have collaborated to publish an article in the Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice. The paper considers and debates techniques for marketing in this digital age in the public sector and makes some comparisons with the commercial sectors.  

It illustrates how local authorities are succeeding in achieving cost reductions and in improving customer satisfaction levels by migrating specific population segments to more appropriate contact channels.

North Lincolnshire Council is aiming to get the best out of esd-toolkit by using the Controlled Lists to help address a number of issues.

This article explains briefly how the Highways and Planning service has focussed on using the Local Government Service List (LGSL) to help with decisions on locally managed services and records retention.

Severe budgetary constraints are making us look more closely than ever at the mix of services we offer in councils.  There are many routes to achieving savings from stopping deliver a service altogether to redesigning what we deliver to be more efficient and focus better on the most vulnerable people.

But how much discretion do councils have in determining what we deliver?

The answer ultimately lies in the legislation that places a duty on councils to do some things and gives them the power to do others.  Through links to that legislation, esd-toolkit can help.    

esd-toolkit can help with profiling, the costs of services and standards for data sharing.

Activity Based Costing will enable organisations to understand how much services actually cost and help identify savings by removing waste and duplication.

Customer Profiling techniques from esd-toolkit will help you design your services around the needs of your customers and achieve efficiency savings.  

esd-toolkit can help with standards for data sharing / re-use of information and the costing of services to help increase accountability for local public services through more transparency, richer data and less inspection.

How can the Business Improvement Community start to turn this challenge into an opportunity?

On the 23^rd September the Business Improvement Working Group will be holding a workshop called:

“Making the Best Use of People’s Time”

The workshop is free to esd-toolkit subscribers who should register on the esd-toolkit website:  http://www.esd.org.uk/esdtoolkit/Events/EventList.aspx

Please contact peter.wrigley@esd.org.uk for further details.

Now that the dust is settling on the priorities for the new coalition government, we thought it timely to remind you of what to look out for from the esd-toolkit programme to help you in the coming year. The key priority that remains is how to do more with less. Obviously (we hope) key to this is more careful targeting of services to customer needs, as well as understanding the costs of component processes within a service (thus quantifying the savings through the removal of waste).

The Customer Insight Work Stream will:

• continue Customer Profiling techniques and publish case studies;
• identify what services are important to different customer segmentations:
• develop the application of customer satisfaction and avoidable contact data to service redesign

The Business Improvement Work stream will:

• roll out the new online Cost Calculator to support cost modelling within the councils’ processes
• provide improved data collection and efficiency reporting facilities
• provide support packages and offer training events
• publish case study materials that evidence improvement and savings

The Key Information/Standards Work Stream will:

• maintain existing controlled lists and add performance indicator types
• demonstrate how councils can identify savings through identifying which services are mandatory (duties) and which are discretionary (powers).
• further develop the Local Government Business Model
• define how controlled lists are used to improve efficiency and transparency

esd-toolkit has always made public the framework of controlled lists it uses to cross-reference information and analyse figures. Now, as transparency is highlighted as a political imperative, that framework (known as the  Local Government Business Model - LGBM) can be used to make sense of data being opened up by local government.

In a letter sent to all Government departments the Prime Minister set out plans to open up data.  Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude will chair a new Transparency Board, including experts and advocates such as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Nigel Shadbolt and Tom Steinberg, to drive the agenda across Government.

esd-toolkit has revamped its standards pages at http://standards.esd.org.uk/ to support all lists that make up LGBM and express them according to the Open Linked Data standards promoted by these experts and used in data.gov.uk. The Local Government Services List (LGSL) remains central to the model.  LGSL is used by Local Directgov and Business Link as well as by many local authorities within their CMS and CRM systems.  LGSL provides common definitions of local government services and allows meaningful links to be made between data from different public sector organisations. Applying common service references means that materials created by one body can easily be re-used by others.