Managing the improvement process

Produced by: Socitm Insight

Type: Reports

This is the tenth and last report in the series designed to help ICT managers improve every aspect of the services that they deliver. This report addresses the process of managing improvement.

Part A Managing the improvement process

Modern government should be accessible, convenient, responsive to customer needs, costeffective, accountable and inclusive. Improving services for the public depends increasingly on credible ICT services provided by ICT staff themselves committed to customer service and continuous improvement. ICT units must rise to the same challenges as their customers and transform their services and their customers' experiences.

Section 1 Introduction

Experience in benchmarking the ICT service lays a valuable foundation for improving all aspects of the service. After a three-year programme involving every council in Wales, we have found examples of good practice in all parts of the improvement process.

Section 2 Ensuring effectiveness

Effectiveness is the extent to which the activities carried out by the ICT unit fulfil their intended purpose. For the service to be effective and deliver customer satisfaction, it is crucial that the plans of the ICT unit align with both the expectations of its customers and the priorities of the organisation.

Section 3 Developing capacity

Everyone involved in delivering council services must have the skills, knowledge, structures and resources to use ICT to its best advantage if they are to realise their full potential. Capacity available from the ICT unit covers the people as well as the infrastructure.

Section 4 Ensuring efficiency

For a machine, efficiency is a mathematical ratio of the work done to the work required to make it operate. For an ICT unit and a council, efficiency is about avoiding wasted time and effort, putting work into the places that deliver the most advantageous outcomes and getting the most out of every resource deployed.

Section 5 Managing resources

Your resources are everything you have available to the council and its ICT unit for service delivery and development, including equipment, people, finance and assets. All of these resources are finite and the available supply of all these things requires careful management if the ICT unit is to deal with its customers' demands effectively.

Section 6 Delivering quality

Quality refers to the degree or grade of excellence in your service delivery. It is a subjective assessment: measurement of quality relies on customer insight. Whatever is done to improve the ICT service, the only true measure of success is in your users' perceptions of the quality of service they receive.

Section 7 Conclusions


An improvement is a change that makes something better or adds to its value. How to improve is a challenge for every part of the public sector, every day. We draw some conclusions from the whole series of benchmarking, workshops and reports.

Part B Improving the ICT service reports

The nine previous reports in this series have covered all key processes in the ICT service. We reproduce the frameworks underpinning their advice and at the improvement actions that formed their conclusions. For any ICT unit looking for focus in an improvement plan, here is an excellent benchmark of good practice.

Last modified: 19th January 2010