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Summary and Terms of Reference [PDF, 142KB]
The Delivery Council is responsible for co-ordinating cross-government activity to drive citizen and business centred services:
There is a wide range of information about what really matters to citizens and businesses in the way public services are designed and delivered: not just formal research but feedback from front-line staff, on websites and from contact centres and so on. Within this material there will be some valuable insights which can help us create services which really work.
To develop this strand the Delivery Council has:
In his Review of Service Transformation, Sir David Varney recommended that cross government work on customer insight is focused more clearly on the citizen and business perspective. A Business Customer Insight Forum has therefore been established to provide expert guidance, via the main Customer Insight Forum, to the Delivery Council on the use of business customer insight and engagement in relation to the Service Transformation Agreement.
The BCIF exists to support cross-government business insight projects, including giving advice, joint resourcing, and work on cross departmental customer journeys. It also provides a forum for the sharing of both best practice and research findings and helps to keep account of key business insight activity in departments so that work is not duplicated in other areas and opportunities for joint working can be identified.
The paper "Multi-channel Transformation in the Public Sector" (available for download from 'Publications' below) provides an overview of this area of work.
The Delivery Council has:
Sir David Varney recommended that each department appoint a Contact Director to have oversight of all channels and to drive increased skills and capability to respond to citizen and business need.
These appointed Contact Directors now constitute the Contact Council, which has strategic and operational oversight of all public sector contact channels. Since its inception in March 2007, the Council has focused initially on significant tactical improvements to government's primary contact channel, the phone, through the introduction of a performance measurement framework for publicly funded contact centres.
Worldwide, public sector organisations are transforming their customer contact functions to face the challenges of modern, multi-channel communications and rising customer expectations.
In order to guarantee customers the same high standards of contact across public services public sector must deliver professional contact handling at each and every customer touch-point.
For the government this means a professional contact function, staffed by high calibre and motivated staff using modern tools and techniques across all public services. This is only achievable with a high degree of cross-sector collaboration.
As a principle gateway to public services, contact centres gather information which is vital to government's insight into its customers and understanding of the performance of its services. They play a vital role in delivering and transforming public services.
The Contact Council was established with the remit of strategic and operational oversight of customer contact in public sector.
Work on service design has developed a set of principles concerned with service delivery, service trust or confidence, service value and service availability. These act as a guide in the development of a more customer centric public service. The Principles are set out in a 'Design Principles' document which will be available shortly.
Information Needs when Making Complex Decisions
Understanding the ways in which people prefer to receive complex information from government is key to improving the efficient delivery of information in a world of greater choice and consumer involvement. This is particularly relevant in those areas where giving citizens an empowered choice – for instance of hospital, treatment, or school- is important. The Information Needs when Making Complex Decisions report is a result of qualitative research commissioned by the Department of Children, Schools and Families, the Department of Health and the Improvement and Development Agency for Local Government to find out more about citizens’ preferences and the current ways in which they source and process information across multiple channels in order to make complex decisions about public services.
Customer Journey Mapping
An introduction to customer journey mapping is available here in HTML format or as a downloadable PDF, Word or PowerPoint document. Please note that many of the tools contained within the guidance are proprietary to Oxford Strategic Marketing. To access the more detailed guidance and the online training modules please go to sharepoint.oxfordsm.co.uk/gjm. You will need to enter the following:
Once the new window has opened, you need to take the following steps:
Contact Details: For queries related to work of the Delivery Council please contact in the first instance delivery.council@cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk.