Local Government Digital Transformation Fund Sift

This year, we’ve been running the Local Government Digital Transformation Fund, and we’ve blogged about the process, and the submissions we’ve received so far. Last week we gave Authorities time to express an interest in the different projects, and we are considering this interest in our next steps. The first of these is the commissioning phase, which we held this week. We got together as a team and put each submission through our commissioning model and, using a weighted spreadsheet, allocated a score for each. The score allowed us to rank the eighteen submissions to develop a shortlist for the Panel session next week (more info below). This ensures the Panel focus their time on those projects that have the greatest impact for Authorities across Wales.

From this commissioning process, we learned a lot! It took a lot longer than we expected, because we were lucky enough to have so many submissions. We’d expected to have around six, so having eighteen meant it took four hours to complete the commissioning and ranking process. Working as a team was beneficial, as it meant we challenged each other’s thinking and assumptions and kept our scoring consistent throughout. As we all work in different disciplines as well, it was interesting to see how we approached each of the problem statements, and how we considered the scope of them. At the end of the sessions, we pulled together the ranking document, and I’ve added notes to highlight those we’ve received expressions of interest for as well.

From this stage, we’ve added a lot to the ongoing retro document we’ve set up, ready for the overall retro of the Fund in March 2023. We now know we need to give longer for this stage, and that a submission template would really help us in being able to pinpoint what the ask is from Authorities. It’s important to ensure that the template isn’t too prescriptive but requests some more detail which would be useful to have at this stage.

Our next stage will be the Panel session on Monday 5 September. Our Panel is made up of Cllr Jane Mudd who holds the digital portfolio for local government, and staff from CDPS (Centre for Digital Public Services), Welsh Government, and Sam Hall our CDO. The Panel will be looking at the top ranked projects and discussing and deciding which of them will receive funding this year. At the end of the session, we should have the definitive list of funded projects, and we’ll be publishing this once we’ve informed the owners of the submissions later next week.

If you’ve got any questions, let us know in the comments below.