What experience-led IT Service Improvement looks like at the Scottish Government

The Scottish Government, the devolved government for Scotland headquartered in Edinburgh, employs civil servants who collectively support the First Minister, Cabinet, and Ministers in delivering policy and services that affect people across Scotland.

The Scottish Government's organizational structure is built around Directorates, alongside a number of additional agencies and public bodies, and with a large and diverse workforce spread across central offices, remote locations, and hybrid environments, making IT a critical enabler for day-to-day operations, collaboration, and service delivery.

The Scottish Government has a strong focus on digital transformation and modern workplace initiatives, investing in technology and IT services to improve how employees work, collaborate, and serve citizens.

Employee experience within IT has long been considered a crucial factor in ensuring staff can work productively and effectively, regardless of their location.

The Scottish Government Corporate Operations Directorate, in particular, is committed to using data, technology, and design-led approaches to deliver better public services and improve its employees' working environments.

Support services in the Scottish Government

iTECS is the core Division within Digital Operations, delivering a centralized IT Service on behalf of the Scottish Government and responsible for IT support, IT service management, service quality, and ultimately the customer experience

Across the full ITSM arena, there are 227 IT support teams with approximately 625 support agents. These teams support a combined user population of approximately 24,000 across the Scottish Government and almost 60 Shared Service customers (Agencies), handling upwards of 10,000 tickets per month (Incidents, Service Requests and Changes), underpinned by more than 420 defined service offerings.

Before the introduction of the HappySignals ITXM Platform and experience management practices, IT support teams within iTECS faced challenges relating to:

• Employee and customer satisfaction and perceptions of internal service providers
• Service Desk operations, including bounced tickets
• Self-service capabilities
• Performance insight and reporting

Performance management before HappySignals

One of the main drivers behind the adoption of the HappySignals ITXM Platform was a Gartner-generated maturity assessment report from August 2021 that evaluated the effectiveness and efficiency of IT service management.

The iTECS Service Level Management capabilities scored low, in part due to the lack of any meaningful customer satisfaction provision.

Before HappySignals, key user experience data was based on ‘out-of-the-box’ customer satisfaction surveys, issued to customers via the ITSM toolset and upon closure of each service ticket (Incidents and Service Requests).

This practice, however, did not support meaningful analysis or target performance measurement. Reporting was largely limited to basic month-to-month ‘counts’, providing little actionable insight or value.

Negative feedback was handled on an exception basis, and customer follow-up was ad hoc rather than systematic.

Bringing the benefits of Experience Management to the Scottish Government

What needed to change

iTECS had a limited ability to capture meaningful customer experience insights, relying on a small set of generic, non-measurable questions that did not provide sufficient value to identify trends or priority areas for service or process improvement.

The primary objective was to improve services across the iTECS portfolio based on real customer feedback rather than assumptions. This marked a significant shift toward a more user-centric approach to designing, delivering, and improving services.

Options considered

While no formal business case was required specifically for procuring an IT experience management platform, the move to a more mature, measurable UX solution was front and center in iTECS's annual roadmap.

Why HappySignals

Several alternative products were considered during the selection process, although none offered the same value as HappySignals. In addition, licensing costs for other options were prohibitive, reinforcing the decision to proceed with HappySignals.

The introduction of the HappySignals ITXM Platform enabled iTECS to quickly and effectively address known challenges.

Meaningful, measurable experience data became available within 3 months. This data highlighted recurring negative themes, enabling iTECS to work collaboratively with customers and colleagues to improve service quality.

Performance reporting also matured significantly, with Happiness, Productivity, and Lost Time metrics measured against defined targets. A structured remediation-planning discipline was established to address service-delivery exceptions.

The benefits of Experience Management

The Scottish Government’s experience improvement journey has been a gradual and sustained effort, requiring ongoing commitment to maintain engagement and participation as new capabilities have evolved.

As a result, IT's profile within the organization has increased. The introduction of HappySignals demonstrated that iTECS takes service delivery and management seriously and now has the customer intelligence required to drive meaningful improvement.

Experience data is now discussed regularly with the Scottish Government Corporate Senior Leadership Team during recurring service performance conversations.

One direct operational change driven by HappySignals data was the decision to stop closing tickets without first confirming resolution with the customer. This addressed a recurring source of dissatisfaction and helped reduce rework and duplication of effort.

At this stage, experience data has not yet directly shaped wider IT strategy, investment decisions, or board-level discussions. However, the foundations are now in place to support this progression as maturity continues.

A particularly valued capability within HappySignals is the ability to ask customers additional targeted questions based on specific data points.

As the platform's benefits became visible, and its ability to measure user experience clearly, the collaboration and engagement with 1^st and 2^nd Line support teams improved, and by extension, feedback return rates also improved.

Measurable outcomes and return on investment

Using 2023 as a baseline year, HappySignals has helped iTECS deliver approximately £1M in savings across the organization in 2024, primarily through reduced lost time analysis.

A further estimated £600,000 in savings has been realized in 2025. These benefits reflect productivity improvements driven by experience-led service and process changes rather than by direct cost-reduction initiatives.

The HappySignals implementation and improvement opportunities

The connector between the ITSM tool and HappySignals was straightforward to implement. Configuration was handled through simple system settings, with no requirement for complex API development.

iTECS initiated a structured test plan (including user acceptance) involving a 50-person pilot over two weeks, with multiple surveys issued. This approach reduced risk and avoided unexpected issues during full rollout.

The implementation team also provided Warranty Support to the customer, via open communication channels, to ensure the UX value was realized as the data naturally grew and the content came alive.

While the technical implementation was successful, communications planning before and during launch could have been stronger. A disconnect in internal communications led to limited early awareness and inconsistent guidance for some stakeholder groups.

As a result, initial adoption levels were lower than expected. The implementation team addressed this by actively maintaining momentum during the early months of deployment. As experience data was collected, iTECS saw increased engagement across first- and second-line support teams, as HappySignals' functionality effectively demonstrated its value in measuring user experience.

Results and lessons learned

A key lesson from the experience has been that meaningful improvements do not always require large-scale change. Small and simple service and process improvements, particularly those identified through experience data, have delivered a significant positive impact on customer experience and on reducing lost time. Focusing on quick wins proved especially effective.

Strong communications planning before and during launch is vital. Any disconnect in internal communications can lead to limited early awareness and inconsistent guidance for some stakeholder groups. This will result in lower initial adoption levels.

This, however, can be addressed by actively maintaining momentum during the early months.

Next steps: Experience improvement beyond IT

A core element of the Scottish Government’s HappySignals roadmap is to continue to extend the use of the ITXM Platform beyond IT. iTECS is actively engaging with other business units to leverage the platform’s multi-tenant capabilities and promote employee-centric thinking across the organization.

Footnote: Since the completion of this Case Study, iTECS has successfully launched HappySignals to the wider business community, specifically for the Corporate Hub, Finance, and Procurement business units.

There is also an ambition to further embed Experience Level Agreements (XLA’s) into overall performance management and reporting, with a longer-term goal of establishing an Experience Management Office (XMO), underpinned by HappySignals data.

The ‘Better Together’ collaboration between HappySignals and its Digital Experience Management (DEM) partner is also of interest to the Scottish Government, which already has a DEM solution in place across its estate.

The Scottish Government appreciates the clear value of combining operational intelligence with direct customer experience insights to ultimately strengthen service delivery decisions.

“The introduction of HappySignals was a game changer for us, addressing not only a known operational service delivery shortfall, but also helping to change the culture within our support framework and create an evidence-based service that combines technical expertise with customer service awareness.” - Ian Wilkie, iTECS Service Improvement Lead