Scottish Executive Moves towards ECM with Objective

Scottish Executive Moves towards ECM with Objective

Public Sector IT project proves a Significant Success

“This is the single biggest IT enabled business change project ever undertaken by the Scottish Executive. It is viewed as highly successful and is on track to achieve all of its stated goals and deliver all its anticipated benefits, within its agreed budget,” says Liz Ure, Head of Information Strategy, Support and Development at the Scottish Executive.

The Scottish Executive is the devolved government in Scotland, overseeing public services such as health, education, justice and transport. It is responsible for the efficient delivery of these services and ensuring they are appropriately managed.

The Scottish Executive recognised that a significant amount of information could not be shared quickly or easily within the organisation. Sharing of information was required to support the culture of openness and collaboration the Executive is striving to achieve, which is aimed at helping the organisation to be more responsive to the demands placed on it both by Scottish Ministers and by citizens and stakeholders.

“Information is the lifeblood of the Scottish Executive’” says Liz. “Placing a greater emphasis on accessibility, accuracy, efficient storage and retrieval of information is seen as key to securing sustainable improvements in the organisation’s agility and effectiveness.”

Following a OJEU negotiated procurement, the Executive chose Objective’s ECM and as a result has transformed the way it manages and maintains its information and records.

The Scottish Executive spent over 18 months at the start of the project on business analysis, which was conducted with project leaders LogicaCMG, before concentrating on the technology element of the program. The business requirements were carefully scoped out and an in-depth, extensive benchmarking exercise carried out on the previous, complex paper driven records system. Once completed, the next step was designing the file plan.

The Scottish Executive set out to secure a range of business benefits, which it is on track to deliver. The key benefits include:

• being able to find the right information more quickly;
• a reduction in the need to store paper on site (which should continue to reduce over time);
• reduction in off site storage; and
• less paper being carried between buildings – transport costs.
• better customer service – particularly if the right information is readily available and can be provided in a number of different formats, as required;
• better quality work for more junior staff ;
• improved opportunities for flexible working practices;
• improved corporate memory;
• improved corporate governance – both in terms of compliance with legislation, and also in terms of better risk assessment (based on more complete information);
• better access to precedent information;
• more robust and reliable disaster recovery for information and records;
• help meet Government targets for electronic records;
• provide the version control (including safeguards against alteration of records), automated facilities and option to introduce workflow; and
• act as a spur to further culture change.

The Executive also set out to build a platform that would enable further development and exploitation of eRDM and has now started to develop and implement workflow and case handling solutions using Objective.

NOTES TO EDITORS

About Objective Corporation

Objective Corporation works extensively with both the public and private sectors to help organisations gain control of information throughout the enterprise. Bringing together the right information, with the right people, at the right time, results in processes that deliver measurable value. Objective helps solve real-world business issues such as improving operational efficiency within increasingly regulated environments.

Through the provision of timely and accurate information, in a secure and auditable environment, Objective solutions are able to meet the challenges in information and process intensive environments, whilst minimising cost and maximising re-use of corporate memory.

Objective works closely with both end user organisations and business partners to ensure maximum returns are realised in timeframes that are realistic and that build a flexible basis for future organisational change.