Digital Scotland Service Standard

9. Define what success looks like and publish performance data

Identify how your service contributes to Scotland’s national outcomes, how you’ll measure and improve your service over time, and how you’ll share information for the benefit of future services.

Why it’s important

Scotland has a national performance framework to help set priorities and understand how government spends public money.

This framework measures Scotland’s progress against a set of national outcomes (aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals) to help track progress in reducing inequality.

It’s important that services contribute to these outcomes - and that we can report progress against the national indicators.

When measuring the performance of a service, defining what good looks like and identifying appropriate metrics means that you’ll know whether the service is solving the problem it’s meant to solve.

Collecting the right performance data means you’ll be alerted to potential problems with your service. And when you make a change to the service, you’ll be able to tell whether it had the effect you expected.

Publishing performance data means that you’re being transparent about the success of services funded by public money.

How you do it

• Map to the national outcomes in Scotland’s National Performance Framework
  Describe which national indicators your service contributes to
• Understand what success looks like for your service
  Identify metrics which will tell you what’s working and what can be improved
• Use a wide range of data to make improvements
  Collect and use performance data from different sources, both online and offline
• Continually review the performance of the service
  Use data to make decisions about how to fix problems and improve the service
• Improve your management information over time
  Review and improve your metrics and data collection practices as you learn more about user needs
• Publish data to help inform and improve future government services
  Publishing information about your service will help government be open, accountable and make evidence-based decisions on future services

Links to detailed guidance:

• Contact the Scottish Government’s Office of the Chief Statistician for support and advice on publishing statistics
• Find tools and examples on how to use the National performance framework
• Guidance on Measuring the Success of your Service from GDS - note that the four mandatory Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are examples and are not currently mandatory for central Scottish Government organisations
• Find information and case studies about the Code of Practice for Statistics
• National Statistician’s guidance for Management Information