Socitm publishes its annual Improve report for 2020

7 May 2020 10:27 AM

For the last 20 years, Socitm has been assisting public sector organisations with the quality of its ICT infrastructure and digital capability, through a dedicated commitment to continuous improvement. Socitm’s benchmarking service allows public sector organisations to measure their ICT performance and identify what is working well and what needs investment and attention.

Improve does not seek to cherry pick individual authorities as beacons of good practice. Rather, our objective is to enable organisations to measure their progress and implement continuous improvement from year-to-year. When the case for change arises, Socitm Improve helps to identify areas for investment and to secure high-level buy-in at a cultural and fiscal level.

The latest edition of Improve which covers the period April 19 – March 20 has been produced in partnership with Littlefish, a managed ICT service company. Given the timeline covered, the report does not account for post COVID-19 activity, but offers public sector organisations the opportunity, through a dashboard facility, to see how they compare to a ‘typical’ organisation. If organisations have participated in previous years, they are also able to compare their past performance enabling an analysis of localised trends. Additionally, over the past year, we have also held several face-to-face workshops that have enabled us to present our findings to specific local councils across the country, from Scotland to Wales, to discuss where future improvements can be made.

The highlights from this years’ research are as follows:

• There has been an increase in flexible working with the percentage of users equipped to work flexibly rising from 39.7% to 75.1%. Furthermore, the daily percentage of users equipped to work flexibly has increased from 10% to 13.5%
• The resolution of incidents at the first point of contact has increased to 70%; an improvement from 53% just two years ago and
• The percentage of incidents resolved within 15 minutes has risen from 39% to 45%

Public sector organisations were able to compare themselves on the following areas: Estate, Cost, Performance and User Satisfaction. Overall, our findings were very positive. A comparison of our responses from this year’s survey to those given in the first five years of this century have demonstrated reassuring and substantial improvements on behalf of our participating councils.

Additionally, this year saw the launch of two new modules to assist organisations in their functional operations: User skills and Service Design Maturity Assessment (SDMA). The former is an assessment of ICT literacy within the organisation, while the latter, created in conjunction with Socitm Advisory, reviews nine distinct areas of an organisation to understand where greater focus is required for the future to improve digital readiness or maturity.

Sandra Taylor, Socitm President said: “Socitm continues to go from strength to strength and in its 20th year we are still able to provide invaluable support and guidance to our members during the coronavirus pandemic.

The findings of our latest Improve Report are a testament to councils up and down the country, that have faced immense challenges over the last ten years – increased demand for services and tight financial budgets that are expected to go further – while still delivering valuable ICT services.

I was particularly pleased to learn about the substantial increase in the number of users equipped to work flexibly. Given all the discussion about a ‘new normal’ post Covid-19, its reassuring to see that many public sector organisations are getting ahead of the curve.  

I would just like to take this opportunity to thank all the councils that have participated in this years’ survey.”

If you would like to read more about our Improve insights, you can access the full document here.

PS: We currently have a COVID-19 digital and ICT impact survey which you can learn more about here