How customer insight helps us make informed decisions presentation
1. How customer insight helps us make informed decisions Cllr Jill Shortland Vice Chair LG Improvement Board 10 March 2011 www.local.gov.uk
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Hinweis der Redaktion
Today’s conference is about show casing and sharing the lesson’s we’ve learnt from the Customer Led Transformation programme which has been running now since April 2009. This programme set out to embed the use of customer insight in all our work to improve how services are designed and delivered. All the funded projects show how the partners in a place have used customer insight and social media tools and techniques to better understand and engage their communities. Though the initial impact on outcomes may be modest – for example a more joined up approach to Repeat Offenders or Drug and Alcohol misusers, or a community that is beginning to feel that it is being listened to as a result of the community portal in Fenland in Cambridgeshire – we recognise that there will continue to be improvements made as a result of these projects as well as a increased collaboration across the agencies involved.
New Government – has raised high expectations about localism. Radical devolution of power and greater financial autonomy to local government. At the same time, deficit reduction is the overarching priority Ten months on – we have seen the: Abolition of PSAs Removal of government offices and RDAs Abolition of Audit Commission and CAA – and the annual assessment of adult services LAAs will not be renewed National indicator set will be replaced with a single list of data requirements A review of the inspection burden on councils Big Society idea – the Government is preparing a White paper on public service reform. We are expecting to see a renewed emphasis on community involvement. Many councils are already involved in moves to support local people, social enterprises and community organisations to take over the running of services and assets. Does this mean that at last central control will be replaced by local responsibility?
You don’t need me to tell you that we have just had the the toughest local government finance settlement in living memory. A few councils have seen a reduction in the money they receive from the Government of up to 17% in the first year. As a result councils face a total funding shortfall of £6.5 billion over the next year. The LGA has been clear that the level of spending reduction that councils are going to have to make goes way beyond anything that conventional efficiency drives, such as shared services, can achieve. We have to face the fact that this level of grant reduction will inevitably lead to cuts in services. For those areas of the country that rely most heavily on the public sector, the Government has provided a limited amount of new money to help those areas cope. But it remains the case that councils now face incredibly tough choices about the services they continue to provide and those they will have to cut. It comes at a time when councils are seeing cost pressures mounting on services such as adult social care, child protection, waste management and flood defenses. Councils knew the cuts were coming and did all they could to prepare. We already cut more than £1 billion from our budgets in the middle of this year. We now have to pull out all the stops to minimise the impact of these cuts and build on our record of delivering new and better ways of doing things.
To meet this challenge we will need to make informed decisions about how to target our scares resources, about what services we stop delivering, those we commission as well as how we can better support citizens and communities to help themselves. To do this we will need robust data and information about the citizens, communities and business that live and work in our area.
Localism will enable us to tailor local services to meet the needs of local citizens, businesses and communities – the make-up of the population and their needs in my ward Chard South in Somerset will be different from those living and working in Church Ward Cllr Richard Kemp’s ward in the City of Liverpool – so it is important that we recognise this in the services we priorities for these different communities Therefore we need to engage with our citizens, communities and businesses to understand their priorities and their experiences of our services so we can agree the areas of focus and what services are delivered, who delivers them and how these are designed
We have now developed a robust approach to self regulation This is based on three principles: First: that councils are responsible for their own performance, Second: that councils are accountable to their local communities and Third: that councils have collective responsibility for the performance of the sector. We consulted widely as we developed our thinking. We had a huge response to our consultation proposals Over 120 individual council responses Another 200 responding through RIEPs and other bodies One of the best responses ever! And councils were very supportive of this approach and the underlying principles
Big Society idea – the Government is preparing a White paper on public service reform. We are expecting to see a renewed emphasis on community involvement. However, many councils are already involved in moves to support local people, working with social enterprises and community organisations to take over the running of services and assets.
As noted before – we face significant challenges and opportunities. Key to our success will be us having the data and information we need about our citizens, businesses and communities – to make informed decisions, including: about what they consider to be important, about how they want to engage with us, about the services they need and how these are best delivered Without this – we will struggle to make informed decisions
Different customers have different needs, an older vulnerable adult living on their own in an isolated area has very different needs even from another older person who is still mobile and confident, plus who has got a family close by to support them. It is only by capturing these difference can we target the support to those who most need it. Equally we have to look at an area in the round – the services and facilities that are there, how accessible these are and whether these could be joined up better making it easier for local people to access these plus reduce the costs of having multiple offices all serving the same communities.
At the root of all these programmes is – customer insight, so understanding and engaging with citizens, communities and businesses to reshape how services are designed and delivered However, we are also working with our partners to understand and engage our communities and citizens in other programmes. The real challenge will be to capture thisintelligence across all these different programmes and share them effectively and consistently
We have seen from the case studies produced as a result of the Customer Led Transformation programme – how the public sector sometimes over engineers the support it puts in place for citizens and communities - for example, the case study on Worklessness in Lewisham where we see they used ethnographic research to produce a detailed map of customer contact with different agencies and their requirements/support. This highlighted – duplication, confusing and incoherent requirements/support across different agencies. As a result they have now introduced new ways of working including: Development of a common assessment framework with shared database Single lead professional Review of how resources are allocated Similarly, we have seen for the work being done in Croydon on ‘chaotic families’ where there are multiple interventions carried out by separate agencies – they have calculated that it costs the public sector approx £300k per family per year – so we are investing lots of officer time from different agencies however, is this the best way to support these families? indeed we can sometimes almost force the citizen to take the service we have created for them whether this is actually what they want – for example, taking elderly citizens to a day centre every day even though some of them may want to do something else, for example have someone take them to a football match instead. But we don’t ask them in the first place.
Tell your own story of how you used this guidance with officers in your own council a few years ago – to help better scope out and then tender the requirements for adult services
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