Performance management with West Lothian Council
Scottish County Council serves a population of around 185,000
They adopted Ideagen Risk Management in 2005 and have over 1,000 users across all service areas.
Solution is used for both performance management and risk management.
We spoke to Joe Murray, Project and Systems Manager, Performance and Improvement Service at West Lothian.
The critical role of performance management in West Lothian Council
Performance Management reporting is a legal requirement for Councils.
By using data to drive actions, performance management can improve the quality of service for residents.
It is also an effective way for Councils to prove that they are continuously seeking improvements, and that they are using public money responsibly.
West Lothian chose Ideagen Risk Management as a system to manage performance reporting nearly 20 years ago.
Supporting compliance and best practice across the service areas
Joe Murray, Project and Systems Manager, is based within the Performance and Improvement Service that provides a range of performance guidance and direction to all of the Council’s service areas:
‘We have performance officers in council services, who are supported by our central team that manages systems and performance from a corporate perspective.
Each year a full review of approximately 500 high-level and statutory key performance indicators is carried out.
We provide guidance to the senior managers in each service area to ensure they are complying with our performance management and public reporting requirements.’
Ideagen Risk Management is embedded across the Council to provide a consistent approach to performance management across all service areas.
‘Having a single system for performance management is part of our ongoing improvement strategy.
We have rolled this out with a very clear structure in our categorizations, expectations, and guidance, and this has evolved over the years.
It has ensured that there is a consistent approach to performance management and improvement activity.’
Ideagen Risk Management provides a very quick and simplistic way to identify specific performance information that could be quickly reported against.
How do committees and senior managers get more value from performance reporting?
A key activity within the Performance and Improvement Service is to facilitate the council’s self-assessment framework which helps services to ensure that they provide good quality and improving services to the people and local communities in West Lothian.
The output of the process is report at both officer and committee level, which includes local Councillors who are elected by the public. Ideagen Risk Management enables the team to report in a way that makes it easier for all stakeholders to interpret the data.
Joe explains how this helps the service to communicate the narrative of the data:
‘The performance indicator charts allow users and customers to visualise where performance has improved or decreased. The service Performance Indicator commentary provides a detailed explanation on the chart performance trends.’
The Deputy Chief Executive and senior management team rely heavily on being able to access performance reports as and when needed:
‘A major benefit of Ideagen Risk Management is that it allows easy access to service performance data.
It is heavily used by those who need a quick understanding of where performance is dipping or improving in the service areas they are responsible for.’
Reliable reporting to auditors and regulators
As well as meeting the needs of internal stakeholders, the performance management function must be ready to present data for external inspections:
‘Having a central location for performance reporting helps when we have various external audits or inspections.
We can run specific system reports that are relevant according to their requirements.
‘For example, we recently had an external assessor onsite to look at our approach to customer engagement.
We could very quickly pull off satisfaction levels and key customer results for the broad range of services that the assessor was interested in.
We have that flexibility to act quickly. We do not find it necessary to chase individuals or services for the required data or information. It is already available in the system.’
Why software is essential for meeting legislative requirements
The complexity of performance tracking and reporting across all parts of the Council means that software is essential. As Joe explains:
‘It is a legislative requirement that we report on performance and it would be impossible to do it manually.
For me, Ideagen Risk Management provides a very quick way to pull specific information that is required for specific activities and functions.
And that information is easy to present, in charts, as text, or in any way that suits our needs.’
‘It can also keep pace with the volume of actions that are added to the system to meet our strategic aims. These are constantly reviewed and refreshed, and come from a range of sources.
I think it would be a problematic to attempt to manually consolidate the wide range of information available from the various council services to meet our reporting requirements.’