FS CHANGE PROGRAMME – Progress against the Plan

Our Change Programme Plan sets out the high-level delivery milestones of the Forensic Services Change Programme. (see appendix A)

The Change Programme continues to track green for most key milestone activity:

• The National Tasking Unit and new ways of working in Search & Recovery Scenes were successfully delivered and continue to embed within the organisation, resulting in improved utilisation of our Scene Examination resource. When considering performance in relation to the tasking of lower priority incidents, there has been a reduction in the timeliness of deployment of scene examination staff to these incidents since the implementation of the new unit.

Police Scotland Portfolio Assurance colleagues have concluded their independent post implementation review (PIR).   The PIR report is currently with the Police Scotland Head of Portfolio Delivery for final review prior to submission to Forensic Services.  Once submitted and digested the requirement for any follow-up activity will be confirmed.  Resultant actions will be taken forward as part of the response to the recommendations of the external review of our tasking and deployment processes as carried out by colleagues from the Metropolitan Police.

• Our people have now transitioned to their contracts and role profiles reflective of the new operating model structure. Final line management and team structures have been confirmed and implemented as of 2 April 2024. Further embedding of our capabilities, (Search & Recovery, Analysis, Reporting), will continue as per our programme plan.  Operating model Phase 3 work streams have been identified and scoping documents defining tangible workstream outcomes are being developed.  These workstreams will deliver optimised workflows and casework routing across the organisation, ensuring realisation, (as far as possible) of the improved timeliness and resource flexibility benefits associated with our new Operating Model.
• The initial management development training programme for our new Capability Team Managers is now complete. Collective sessions on responsibilities and matrix management have been held for all our managers and the management training needs analysis activity is now complete. The next phase of our management development activity will be the delivery of bespoke sessions for our Service Delivery Managers throughout May.  These sessions will continue build upon our refreshed approach to management development, committed to delivering a culture of empowerment, and performance / people focused decision making across all our leadership teams.
  
  
• Development of the Full Business Case (FBC) for our core operating system continues to progress. Recent sessions with key stakeholders have been focused on confirming resource availability and timeframes for technical architecture and procurement activity. 

Following these sessions, it was accepted at the FS COS & Data Migration Project Board (10/04/2024) that, given the complexity of interdependencies and associated timeframes, the original target date of June 2024 for delivery of the FBC is no longer achievable.  All stakeholders agree that joined up detailed and effective planning at this stage will ensure the project can remain on track to deliver the FBC against a realistic and achievable timeline.