On 23 February 2000 Jack McConnell, the then Minister with responsibility for 21st Century Government announced the Modernising Government Fund (MGF) to Parliament. Its purpose was to support innovation in the public sector, to address policy priorities for modernisation and particularly to support and promote joined-up working.

East Lothian Council applied for and was granted money from the Modernising Government Fund to implement a programme of modernising projects. Projects undertaken or underway to date are:-

Smartcards
Introduction of smartcards in Secondary Schools

• Incorporating Young Scot branding, which entitles the card holder to discounts on many goods and services 
• Incorporating proof of age hologram 
• For use with cashless catering and vending facilities in schools 
• For use in school & public libraries 

Replacement of public library membership cards with smartcards

• Introduction of Internet access to library facilities, using smartcards

Issue of National Entitlement cards to eligible disabled and elderly residents

Issue of National Entitlement cards to young people who are resident in Scotland.

For more information on Smartcards, please click here.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)/Citizens Account (Customer Database)
Design of IT infrastucture and security requirements to support electronic sevice provision Development of a new Customer Contact Centre, providing a 24 * 7 service Development of Customer Relationship Management to allow consistent service to be provided via channels chosen by the customer 

• Implementation of a customer database 
• Introduction of Contact Management facility to improve communications with our customers 
• Introduction of a service request tracking facility
• Development of improved, more efficient business processes
• Introduction of a link between the East Lothian Council Citizen's Account and the National Infrastructure. 

Dialogue Youth
Dialogue Youth is an initiative to engage the young people of East Lothian. The five main elements are:-

• Smartened Cards - provision of Young Scot Cards with additional services (being provided by the Smartcard project)
• Involving Young People - engaging young people fully in the community planning process.
• Research & Resource Base - working with young people, council departments and partner agencies to gather information, carry out research into youth issues in the local area to inform community planning partners.
• National Youth Information Portal - establish and support a team of young people called 'The Hack Pack', to research, write and publish local information on their own pages of youngscot.org, the national youth information portal.
• Personal & Social Education - work in partnership with schools and youth organisations to use the Young Scot Tutor Resource Kit to support PSE and citizenship programmes.

DNA (Scotland)
Production of local street gazetteer and corporate address gazetteer to provide a definitive source of accurate street and property information for East Lothian. Once created, the gazetters will be used to provide consistent data to be used in the provision of council services and will be able to be used as the foundation for exciting new service applications in future.