Our Commissioning Model

One of our main principles as a team is to work in the open and be transparent about what we are doing. We believe in being held accountable. To do this, we want anyone interested to understand our values, intent, and why we do the work we do. With this in mind, we want to show and explain our commissioning process. This blog should help show you why we are working on specific projects, why we are not working on others, and finally, the process we go through to prioritise what we do.

The three main themes of our model

It is important to note that the model is not scientific. However, we have tried to make sure every topic feeding into the model is consistently measured. We have done this by adding detailed scoring criteria with clearly defined measurables. 

Citizen Impact

We want to make sure that the impact we have on citizens plays a prominent part in shaping our backlog of work. For this reason, we measure the citizen value and the volume of citizens impacted. This will mean that the model will prioritise projects that will benefit the most citizens.

We want to ensure that our end goal of improving services for people living, visiting, and working in Wales remains visible to us, which is why Citizen Impact is weighted so strongly in our model.

Local Authority commissioning Impact  

One of the main reasons for the creation of our team was to support and help local authorities progress on their digital journey. With this in mind, we want to make sure that the projects we work on add as much value to as many local authorities as possible. That is why the local authority commissioning model impact score has several themes feeding into it, as seen below:

• Demand from local authorities and commitment to the project
• How critical the project is – is there a danger of a breach of policy and/or regulations?
• How time-sensitive is the project?
• The potential cost and efficiency savings
• Amount of local authorities the project impacts
• Does it align with our strategic aims?

All these themes are weighted differently to make sure some projects do not get discounted whilst being of high importance. Many of these themes are easy to measure, which helps us ensure our scoring is consistent for all potential projects. These themes total to a score that we believe reflects how important the project is to all local authorities in Wales.

Effort

The final thing that we measure is the level of effort involved in delivering the project. Everyone working in local authorities is busy, and for our team, it is no different. Because of this, the more high-value work we can do that does not take a lot of resource or time, the better.

The effort takes to deliver the project is the last thing we check when prioritising projects. For instance, if two projects scored similar on Citizen Impact and Local Authority Impact, the one that takes the least amount of effort would be prioritised. However, if an effort score were low, the project would not be prioritised over another project, which scores higher for local authority and citizen impact, just because it will take less time and resources. The Effort score is made up of the following three themes:

• Resource requirements
• Cost of project
• Duration of project

The criteria for scoring these themes are all numerical, which makes the effort required for a project easy to score.

How local authority commissioning helps us  

This commissioning model helps us to stay on track and keep driving towards improving digital services in Wales. In our short time as a team, we have identified a lot of great work in local authorities that we would love to get involved in. However, we are not a big team, so this model helps us pick the work that can add the most value for the most people.

If you would like a more detailed walkthrough of the model and its scoring criteria, please email chris.sutton@wlga.gov.uk.