The core objective of Customer First is for local government to create a shared national infrastructure which hosts a number of nationally shared services/business applications. The infrastructure will provide (for customers and councils): • A new facility for councils to have 'single view' of each customer through a 'citizen's account' (the council's definitive contact details for its customers i.e. name, address, email, phone, mobile etc); • The facilities for councils to create a customer relationship management system to help ensure that customers get all of the services that they are entitled to; • Benchmarks, standards and standard definitions for services and service delivery; • Improved training and technical skills for customer services staff in each council; • To help with the re-training and transfer of staff from back offices to new front line customer services staff roles; • A national address gazetteer (to hold current addresses/address history for customers); • A new public services portal (online information and services) for customers to manage their own data and to introduce a new customer service to deal with a change of circumstance (death notification, birth notification, change of name, address, contact details); • A new national concessionary fares scheme (with the ability to add commercial and integrated travel tickets and to encourage the use of public transport); • A new public services smartcard - a National Entitlement Card (NEC) - and card management service (to allow different parts of the public sector to issue cards to their customers - priority application being the new national entitlement card and the new transport concession; • To implement new national specifications for library, leisure and cashless catering systems; • A priority to issue a new 'smart' Young Scot card to young people in Scotland and to implement a new ' rewards and loyalties' scheme for young people ; • To introduce a nationally accredited 'proof of age' scheme; • National gazetteer services which can provide public service organisations with the definitive details of every property in Scotland; • A Citizens Portal which allows customers access to a range of public services (with the facilities to link this to wider public services at a UK level - should their be a demand for this); • An authentication service (with secure customer user ID and Password), which will allow customers to authenticate themselves to the Citizens Portal; to a council contact centre; to have secure online access to change their personal details in their citizen's account; to make service requests, report a lost or stolen Entitlement Card; to engage citizens in the consultation process; to provide information to citizens • An environment to deliver savings by re-negotiating with suppliers and to procure goods and services at a national level; • Support for a new national ePlanning system • The delivery of a new national personal licensing system. |