07 September 2007
Public sector employees will need to accept changes in their jobs and responsibilities as part of plans to share services, Scottish finance and management officers have been told.
At a CIPFA seminar in Edinburgh on August 31, Craig Russell, head of the efficient government delivery division at the Scottish Executive, emphasised First Minister Alex Salmond's undertaking that there will be no compulsory redundancies as a result of the reforms. But Russell made it clear that there would be changes which public sector employees would have to accept.
He added: 'While the head count may not change particularly… there will still have to be changes in people's lives and we will have to make sure we handle these… human capital elements as well as possible.'
Russell also told the seminar that progress had been made on shared services, but more needed to be done. He pointed to other countries, such as Denmark, where it was possible to log on to a health website and obtain access to all your own medical records, make appointments, order prescriptions or check your drugs regime.
Russell said: 'There is no place, in my view, for complacency. It's not good enough to say there are many [countries] that are worse than us.'
PFsep2007
