Programme of talks 2001-2002

Speaker:

Alan Fraser, Scottish Executive

Date:

Wednesday 27 February 2002

Time:

18:30

Venue:

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society

Admission:

Free

Information Age Government

The subject is the Scottish Executive's vision for 21st Century government and its modernisation agenda; how that is grounded in the key policy objectives of the Executive - particularly the commitment to social justice; and how it is ultimately about the better delivery of public services and access to information.

This is not a techie-led agenda, but technology has an important role to play; we are coming at this from the standpoint of the consumer or user of services and information, rather than from that of the bureaucracy. One consequence is that the review and mapping of processes which this prompts identifies potential for real improvements.

There is a question about the Executive's own role in this change process, given that it is not directly responsible for service delivery to any significant extent. But it has a responsibility for articulating and communicating the vision; for setting standards - both technical and performance - ; for facilitating exchange of best practice; for co-ordinating activity; and for stimulating and supporting innovation.

A main instrument for stimulating change has been the Modernising Government Fund of £26m. The approach was to encourage a range of innovative applications across the wider public sector in Scotland with a particular focus on citizen centred projects involving joined up service delivery by a number of agencies.

The second round of the Fund was announced at the end of last year with a more narrowly focussed approach - identifying the development of a citizen's account, the use of smartcards, the development of data sharing and joining up front and back office functions, and the extension of e procurement as key priorities. The role of the Executive is to ensure that the benefits in terms of efficiencies of scale and of better service delivery can be realised, by supporting the adherence to common standards and to a common architecture when it comes to public sector smartcards for example, while avoiding being over prescriptive in other areas , such as the priority applications for these in particular areas.

None of this is simple. There are many challenges to be faced. But we aim to exploit Scotland's natural and organisational advantages in pushing ahead the modernisation process.