Access to Services
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Workstream:
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Corporate Improvement and Value for Money – Business Transformation
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Title:
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Access to Services
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Scope:
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Sub-regional North Yorkshire
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Funds awarded:
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£250,000
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Lead contact:
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Paul Hill Town Hall
St Nicholas Street Scarborough North Yorkshire YO11 2HG Tel: 01723 232304
Email: Paul.Hill@scarborough.gov.uk
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Background:
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The North Yorkshire ‘Connect’ Partnership includes all the Councils operating within North Yorkshire (9 in total), the vision for which is ‘for customers to have completely seamless community service delivery regardless of the provider or the preferred access channel made possible by new ways of working and electronic access to key information’. To achieve this vision ‘Connect’ has produced an ambitious and challenging strategy and roadmap. The District Councils and County Council are therefore working together on a shared Access to Services agenda that will streamline 2-tier delivery of services and help overcome this (understandable) lack of clarity amongst the majority of the public about who delivers what. However, its not just about finding solutions to 2-tier challenges, the City of York Council is also engaged to provide a Unitary perspective and will work with the Partnership on those parts of the programme that are mutually beneficial. The vision also extends far beyond the Councils of North Yorkshire to encompass the wider public service community, e.g. the Police are already engaged and other providers (NHS, Agencies and the 3rd sector) are being engaged. The outcomes from the programme, either as a complete model or as individual elements from the overall programme, will be equally applicable to service providers in the wider regional area (and beyond); and can be made available to them as a proven method of making seamless delivery of community services available to customers regardless of who actually provides the service.
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Delivery:
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The ‘Connect’ strategy document is embedded at the end of this section of the bid form. It clearly sets out the high-level aims of ‘Connect’ and the manner this will be achieved. Collaborative work to date has helped to produce the “Access to Services Roadmap” contained within the ‘Connect’ Strategy and a programme plan is currently being produced to underpin the roadmap. It is recognised that the resources required to take forward this project will be significant, but the work is critical if local communities are to be able to seamlessly transact with their local service providers without needing a working knowledge of the structures and barriers employed by these providers.
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Outcomes:
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The programme will transform access to services in North Yorkshire and empower customers to self-manage their interactions with service providers operating in their local community area.
The overarching objectives of the programme are common to many of the REIP objectives, e.g. |
• In meeting the increasing demands and expectations of our customers for high quality, responsive services that meet their needs;
• Providing greater effectiveness by removing confusion about who does what and providing seamless access to community based services;
• Tackling complex cross-cutting service issues and issues arising from customer mobility and out of hours accessibility;
• Producing service improvements through focusing on each customer’s individual needs, by innovation of processes and transformation of the way services are delivery; and
• Sharing the resultant model and lessons learnt to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of services across all community service sectors and to the wider regional area and beyond.
The programme will meet these by delivering;
• Seamless access to services; providing the customer with the right information, at a time convenient to them and in a form they find useful;
• Removing the barriers about who does what, providing consistency over the full range of community services on offer and in so doing improve social inclusion especially in rural areas;
• Making service delivery and standards consistent so that the customer is not aware of the complex behind-the-scenes cross-cutting nature of public service provision;
• Transforming the way services are delivered by empowering staff to work ‘smarter’ and customers to self-service whenever and wherever they want; and
• Developing a service delivery model that can be implemented across the county, regional area and beyond.
• Establishment of a regional single citizen’s account, the so-called ‘single truth’. Such an account would provide all the details of its customer in one place and all systems/partners that needed customer information would link with this one source.
Saving that can be realised by this approach are;
• Reducing confusion about who does what and providing customers with the right information and access to services when they want them will reduce avoidable contacts (NI14). Reducing avoidable contacts will reduce the resources needed to handle mediated customer enquiries;
• Providing greater consistency in the delivery of information and services will help remove un-necessary duplication, improve the quality of information/services on offer and provide the potential for better social inclusion. These will all result in greater customer satisfaction, simplified processes and reduced numbers of complaints;
• Working together to provide a customer focussed and shared approach to access to services will provide opportunities to harmonise systems and approaches used to deliver services. The sharing of the service delivery model and spreading of best practice will not only improve the quality of service provision, but also provide the potential to reduce costs both county-wise and across wider regional areas;
• The ability to promote mobile and flexible working and allow staff and services to work ‘smarter’ will reduce waste, e.g. service requests direct to relevant operative thus cutting out intermediate processes and steps; and
• Developments to web-enable back and front office services, integrated key information systems and improved web access will allow the marketing of direct self-service channels that are cheaper and more convenient to service users.
• Removal or reduction of duplication, especially around information and databases.
• Providing greater effectiveness by removing confusion about who does what and providing seamless access to community based services;
• Tackling complex cross-cutting service issues and issues arising from customer mobility and out of hours accessibility;
• Producing service improvements through focusing on each customer’s individual needs, by innovation of processes and transformation of the way services are delivery; and
• Sharing the resultant model and lessons learnt to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of services across all community service sectors and to the wider regional area and beyond.
The programme will meet these by delivering;
• Seamless access to services; providing the customer with the right information, at a time convenient to them and in a form they find useful;
• Removing the barriers about who does what, providing consistency over the full range of community services on offer and in so doing improve social inclusion especially in rural areas;
• Making service delivery and standards consistent so that the customer is not aware of the complex behind-the-scenes cross-cutting nature of public service provision;
• Transforming the way services are delivered by empowering staff to work ‘smarter’ and customers to self-service whenever and wherever they want; and
• Developing a service delivery model that can be implemented across the county, regional area and beyond.
• Establishment of a regional single citizen’s account, the so-called ‘single truth’. Such an account would provide all the details of its customer in one place and all systems/partners that needed customer information would link with this one source.
Saving that can be realised by this approach are;
• Reducing confusion about who does what and providing customers with the right information and access to services when they want them will reduce avoidable contacts (NI14). Reducing avoidable contacts will reduce the resources needed to handle mediated customer enquiries;
• Providing greater consistency in the delivery of information and services will help remove un-necessary duplication, improve the quality of information/services on offer and provide the potential for better social inclusion. These will all result in greater customer satisfaction, simplified processes and reduced numbers of complaints;
• Working together to provide a customer focussed and shared approach to access to services will provide opportunities to harmonise systems and approaches used to deliver services. The sharing of the service delivery model and spreading of best practice will not only improve the quality of service provision, but also provide the potential to reduce costs both county-wise and across wider regional areas;
• The ability to promote mobile and flexible working and allow staff and services to work ‘smarter’ will reduce waste, e.g. service requests direct to relevant operative thus cutting out intermediate processes and steps; and
• Developments to web-enable back and front office services, integrated key information systems and improved web access will allow the marketing of direct self-service channels that are cheaper and more convenient to service users.
• Removal or reduction of duplication, especially around information and databases.
Documents / web links: