Change & Improvement

Best Value Findings 2013

The council has a good awareness of where it needs to improve and supports a culture of continuous improvement among staff.

Where are we now? 

Overall, as a council, we remain committed to robust self-evaluation as an approach for recognising how we are doing, how we know and what we need to do next to improve. We have a culture of continuous improvement that encourages officers to contribute to change activity and to challenge the status quo. A range of approaches are used and support is available to ensure activity is managed well. Our Strategic Change Board provides high level oversight of key projects and ensures that any barriers to success are identified and tackled. We will continue to ensure that improvement strategies impact positively on our organisation. 

What are our key challenges?

The challenges identified through ‘How Good is Our Governance in Practice’ as reported in May 2019 highlight that more needs be done to link our budget process, governance and management arrangements to the vision and culture we are trying to achieve through One Aberdeenshire. The weak areas are identified as benefits realisation and the difficulty in reporting on outcomes that identify the difference made. Clarity in cross service working and improving links across service activity to avoid duplication and reduce silo working has always been a challenge in an organisation as large and complex as the Council, and we must continue to work towards the addressing these issues.

Where are we going?

• Implementing the Benefits Realisation Framework will place the council in a stronger position of identifying outcomes achieved resulting from transformation programmes.
• Having a better approach to a cross service transformation programme, linked to the Medium-Term Financial Strategy that is aligned to delivering the council priorities will contribute towards moving beyond silo working, avoiding duplication and being smarter use of performance data and community engagement. Coordination
• Building on the implementation and work of the Strategic Change Board, a prioritisation framework and toolkit will improve our ability to identify resources and prioritise projects against potential benefits, managing our resources to achieve better outcomes.
• Increasing capacity and skill set in portfolio, programme and project management embedding the project management approach.