Testing of Council Self-Help Tool Underway

TESTING IS CURRENTLY UNDERWAY FOR A NEW SELF- ASSESSMENT AND IMPROVEMENT TOOL FOR LOCAL COUNCILS DESIGNED BY IESE AND ITS CONSORTIUM PARTNERS.

Commissioned by the Local Government Association (LGA), iESE along with partners Knowledge Hub, PFI Knowledge Solutions (PFIKS) and Porism, have been codesigning the Efficient and Intelligent Councils tool. The product, which will be free to use and is expected to be unveiled this summer, will allow chief executives and leaders to get a better idea of how they are performing and the next steps they could take to become more efficient and intelligent.

The tool will be backed up by a full suite of resources, such as case studies, methods, additional tools and contacts, to signpost help in areas local authorities would like to improve.

To get the design right the consortium has been working with representatives from 30 different councils including district, borough, county, unitary authorities and city councils. By answering the questions, a local authority will get an idea of how they are performing in different areas. There will be four levels or stages of the improvement model. At level 1, a council is at the service-led level of change, at levels 2 and 3 at the demand-led level and at level 4 they are going right back to the actual needs being presented and responding to these in a holistic and intelligent way, solving the root causes of need. Local authorities do not need to pass through each stage before progressing to the next level, they may decide that for a particular service a stage is not necessary or aligned to its goals, as for some services, leaner or faster processes may be adequate.

Graham Simmons, Senior Business Consultant at iESE, gives the example of a council working at level 1 as one streamlining its processes to get stairlifts to customers quicker, while a council working at level 4 would be asking why the customer needs a stairlift in the first place. "It might be because the customer keeps falling and they might keep falling because of mobility issues. The mobility issues might be due to health and diet or lack of local support. With level 4, you are going right back to the beginning," Simmons explains.

He added that once the tool is available later this year, local authorities should take part because they will have the opportunity to assess where they are as a council and see where they are on the scale of improvement. "They can identify what the gap is, what they can do better and gain access to the resources to move to the next level," he added.