Paul Jackson
‘ perform an inspection’. In the later work by NWeGG, this list was whittled down to around 50 generic processes( see ESD 2011), covering district, country and unitary authorities. Having identified a business process( or‘ unit of work’), it can then be assigned to a point on the transaction life‐cycle. For a local authority, six such points have been identified( ESD 2011: 5‐6):
• Pre‐transaction: work that is needed prior to service requests or delivery, such as providing information on a service, or registering a service user’ s details
• Service request: receiving a service, or making a request for one
• Fulfilment: delivering a service, such as repairing an asset or inspecting a property
• Post fulfilment: dealing with follow‐on work, such as annotating a customer’ s file or dealing with a complaint
• Support: work that enables all other transactions take place, such as to train staff or manage a budget
• Democracy: work, such as developing policy or engaging with citizens, which is bound up with a local authority’ s governance and direction setting.
Taken together, a set of processes across the transaction life‐cycle enable services to be delivered to customers. Using the Cost Architecture Framework, these can then be aligned to the Local Government Services List.
Local Government Services List: Whilst the functions of a local authority are prescribed by statute, how those functions are resourced, managed and delivered as‘ services’ is dependent on the way those services are designed. As we have seen, each service is comprised of a number of processes( and transaction points). In order to measure and compare how – and how well – such services are delivered, there is therefore an issue in describing services in a standard way. To do this, the Cost Architecture Framework makes reference to the Local Government Services List( LGSL) managed by the ESD Toolkit community( see CLG 2008, p. 33).
The LGSL provides a standard way of referring to council services( over 800 of them), thus allowing for like‐forlike comparisons across organisations. For example, LGSL No. 710( Trading Standards: Food Production Hygiene) is the service that ensures‘ standards are maintained in all aspect of food production and distribution, animal health and agriculture’.
Figure 1 shows the relationship between activities, processes, the LGSL and the functions of local authorities.
Figure 1: Illustrated cost architecture, adapted from CLG( 2008)
4.1.3 Phase 3: Calculating activity, service and channel costs
The approach described above charts the background and development of the Cost Architecture Framework. Following production of the 2008 guidance, and in collaboration with volunteer authorities, an Excel
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