The Scottish Government (and the UK Government) is facing challenges in improving public service productivity. Public services are seeking to address productivity in the context of limited resources and increased demand.
The Scottish Government’s Public Service Reform Strategy (PSRS), published in June 2025, is focussing on joining up services to enhance service provision and improve productivity to achieve better outcomes.
Joining up services is not a new idea, and experience has shown that joining up services is complex, especially in terms of fostering collaboration and planning the integration of services (Wessels, et al., 2008; DH&SC, 2022).
Joining up involves considering: 1) working across service boundaries; (2) developing joined-up data and digital architectures; and (3) identifying what productivity gains can be achieved that ensure better outcomes in person-centred services.
To improve productivity requires addressing workplace innovation and underpinning digital and data infrastructures in joined-up services. Little is known about collaborating in joining up services from a productivity perspective and how to integrate working practices and digital and data resources that will yield productivity in collaborative and integrated approaches in services.
The project focuses on the collaboration and integration aspects of joining up services. It will explore the process of developing collaboration and then how services can be integrated and implemented.
The project uses an innovative methodology that draws on design approaches that seek to improve the discourse through a service architectural approach (Martin, 2014). It utilises a collaborative and participative approach based on workshops, reflective journals and feedback surveys. It will produce a methodology to support collaboration and integration in joining up services aided by productivity thinking.
Project lead Bridgette Wessels (University of Glasgow
Collaborators Katherine Long (University of Glasgow
