Celebrating 7 Years of the Digital Office for Scottish Local Government

Celebrating 7 Years of the Digital Office for Scottish Local Government 

Today, marks a significant milestone – the 7th anniversary of the Digital Office for Scottish Local Government. Its been an incredible journey since Colin Birchenall and I launched the Office. As we celebrate this special day, it's only fitting to take a moment to reflect on the remarkable achievements we've accomplished over the past year.

From an operational perspective, we have:

• Further embedded into our new hosting organisation, COSLA.
• Welcomed Thomas Glen as our new SOLACE Chair, replacing Lorraine McMillian who has now retired.
• We welcomed five new employees and two fully funded consultants to work alongside us, bringing our team's total size to 21.

As our work is aligned with the National Digital Strategy for Scotland, which was co-written between Scottish Government, COSLA, Digital Office and Improvement service, in the past year the Digital Office has delivered the following:

Digital Skills Initiatives:

We’ve made significant strides in enhancing digital skills:

• Best Practice: We collaborated with Society of Personnel and Development Scotland (SPDS) on creating best practice to assist councils, accessible through the Digital Office Product & Services Catalogue.

• Digital Skills Capability Matrix: We created a Digital Skills Capability Matrix for all staff, providing a definition of ‘role pathways’ for digital skilling, and an audit of learning management platforms and current collateral within councils; a process which helps us look at efficiencies and savings.

• Learning Pathways: Working with the Scottish Digital Academy, we defined roles and skills pathways and reduced costs for service design training through collaborative procurement.

• Data Essentials Training: We partnered with The Scottish Digital Academy to fund the development of ‘Data Essentials’ training, building on best practice created in Perth and Kinross Council. This is shared with partner councils for quicker access to materials. By doing so, we can help with benefit realisation and cost and time savings.

• Cross sector collaborations and upskilling: We supported COSLA policy colleagues and stakeholders across Digital Health & Care to align workstreams with SPDS, whilst identifying co-funded opportunities to accelerate support and address skills gaps.

• Microsoft Enterprise Skilling Initiative: Negotiated with Microsoft to gain free access for partnership councils to their Microsoft Enterprise Skills Initiative. This provides hands-on training for basic digital skills, as well as supporting learning on Microsoft 365 products and enhancing technical skills and knowledge of key Microsoft technologies. It offers interactive courses, role-based training curriculums, and Microsoft Certifications.

Government and Services (Public Services Working for All):

We've continued to drive the following initiatives supporting actions under the Public Services Working for All section of the National Digital Strategy:

• Digital Maturity Assessments: The Digital Office continued to carry out Digital Maturity Assessments for local authorities, providing valuable insights for gap analysis and to promote the sharing of best practice. To date, 24 councils have now completed assessments, with 3 completing a second assessment.

• Data Strategy Collaboration: We collaborated with the Digital Health & Care Data Steering Group to assist in creating a Data Strategy, which was officially published in November 2022. The aim of this Strategy is to enhance collaboration and interoperability of operational data, ultimately supporting improved health and wellbeing outcomes.

Digital Telecare Programme:

Our Digital Telecare programme has achieved significant milestones including:

• Shared ARC Platform: Supported by the Scottish Government TEC Programme, the Shared Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC) Platform was developed in collaboration with a group of 17 early adopter telecare services (15 of which are local authorities). The Shared ARC Platform accelerates the transition to digital telecare. It also crucially establishes a unique platform for innovation which can support the wider Health and Social Care sectors ambitions around better use of data, and early intervention and prevention. This single source framework solution is innovative and the first of its kind in Europe. We moved to preferred supplier phase in September 2023.

• Collaborative Agreement Implemented: In 2021, we signed a collaborative agreement with TEC Cymru, allowing them access to the learnings and resources from our Digital Telecare programme. This helped them to accelerate their own strategies and deployments before the switch-off of analogue telephone services in 2025.

• Assessed Solutions Scheme: We have continued delivering our Digital Telecare Assessed Solution Scheme. Ensuring that a consistent and best practice approach is taken to cyber security, suppliers that meet the outlined minimum security standard requirements can be added to an Assessed Solutions List. This scheme saves Telecare Service Providers resource as they do not need to carry out their own testing.

• Implementation Award Scheme: We have continued our Implementation Award Scheme which helps provide recognition to Telecare Service Providers across Scotland when reaching five key milestones during their transition to digital telecare.

• Digital Telecare Data Standards: In early 2023, we finished our creation of Digital Telecare Data Standards, which will be used in the final design of the Shared Alarm Receiving Centre. This will help in the creation of new services, allowing for better integration to other Health & Care systems.

Transforming Government:

To align with the actions under the Transforming Government section within the National Digital Strategy, we have delivered the following:

• M365 Licence Procurement: We partnered with Scotland Excel and Crown Commercial Services on a joint aggregated procurement for M365 licences concluding in February 2023. This eliminated the need for individual council procurements, resulting in significant time savings and £987,271 in combined savings for 11 councils over three years.

• Managed Security Operation Centre: Continuing our partnership with Scotland Excel, we're collaborating with 18 councils on a joint procurement for a Managed Security Operation Centre, expected to conclude by Spring 2024. This effort aims to reduce costs, expedite outcomes, and enhance cyber threat intelligence.

• Special Pricing Deal for Cybersecurity: Through collaboration with Crown Commercial Services, we secured a special pricing deal with Microsoft for Sentinel & Log Analytics products for cyber security. This was available to all local authorities in Scotland until June 2023.

• Common Solutions Mapping: We partnered with the Scottish Government to conduct in-depth meetings, mapping out digital and business components for shared solutions and platforms. This work is designed to establish repeatable components that enhance interoperability and data flow, leading to improved outcomes, decision-making, and cost savings on the different solutions we all currently use.

• Data Maturity Model: Collaboratively with the Scottish Government, we co-created a data maturity model that can be used to assist in identifying best practice, gaps and helping support better use of operational data and scaling up of skills within councils.

• Data Returns Portal: We're working with Improvement Service, COSLA Policy colleagues, and SOLACE on a "Data Returns Portal" concept business case. The final solution should help reduce not only the amount of reporting requests we get through from Scottish Government and partners,  but also the time it takes to compile them. Completion for the full business case is due Autumn 2023.

• Data Culture Opportunities: Together with COSLA Policy colleagues and Public Health Scotland, we've initiated a programme aimed at sharing expertise, resources, and training to assist in developing data cultures for all councils. Again, collateral and materials will be added to our Product and Services Catalogue for all councils to access.

• Internet of Things: We lead the work on the opportunities that the Internet of Things (IOT) business models and innovation can bring to the Local Government sector. This has included working with Civtech, CENSIS, Trossachs National Park and councils to use IOT for predicting environmental impact and better customer experiences for tourism. In the past year, we’ve also worked on school air quality monitoring and more effective gritting routes. All of these blueprints and more can be accessed by all councils, which will hopefully help them deploy similar solutions, aiding better outcomes and customer experiences. In Spring 2023, we partnered with CENSIS to start working on developing repeatable business cases and explore potential opportunities for collaborative procurements for Internet of Things solutions to support potential time and cost savings for councils.

Services Working for All: 

To align with the actions under the Services Working for All section within the National Digital Strategy, we have delivered the following: 

• Microsoft 365 Cross-Organisation Collaboration: The Digital Office in collaboration with Scottish Government and NHS partners have established a National Programme to facilitate seamless communication and collaboration among Health and Care staff across Local Government and the NHS Scotland. Aligned with the second aim of the Digital Health and Care strategy, the programme envisions a future where Health & Care staff working across the boundaries of their own organisation can easily share information and communicate effectively using the M365 platform to provide better services to the citizens of Scotland. This has helped support local authorities and health boards to implement Outlook Calendar Availability Sharing (free/busy) and Teams Federation within their organisation to ease collaboration across the sector, strengthen working relationships and streamline the transition from hospital to home for service users, thus helping with winter pressures mitigation that kicked off in October 2022. We have just reached a major milestone with 56% of all councils now live, 25% in progress, and 16% that are unable to participate but in contact with us, resulting in 97% engagement across local government.

• Phase 2 is currently underway and focuses on the development of the requirements and common guidance needed to enable document sharing between councils and the NHS Scotland. This should reduce cost and introduce a common way of working, whilst improving data/intelligence sharing which can then be used to support better health and wellbeing outcomes for citizens. Once the objectives are achieved, this will ultimately be of value to multi-function teams between Social Care, Health, Education, Police Scotland, Scottish Fire & Rescue service when working with vulnerable people. 

• Digital Identity Programme: As the Chair of the Digital Identity Scotland Programme at Scottish Government, I have been working with the Improvement Service to ensure that Local Government’s investment in its Myaccount product used by 27 councils, National Entitlement Card, Young Scot, and others is taken into consideration with any decisions being made, as well as making sure any outcomes benefit Local Government.

• Digital Assurance Board: Our Digital Assurance Board has been used to explore interoperability of social security for Local Government systems, a cyber security review for SEEMiS, digital standards for education, opportunities for digital planning and is now working with Scottish Government on digital tech and business “componentisation” to assist in building new services. 

As you can see in this blog, the achievements and progress we've made over the past year as a collective Digital Partnership have been remarkable, and it wouldn't have been possible without your support and dedication.

Stay tuned for our next blog, where we will outline our priorities and initiatives for the coming year. Together, we'll continue working as a collective to adopt a ‘Once for Scotland’ approach to digital transformation

If you have any questions, please get in touch at info@digitaloffice.scot.