Strategic Environment - Case Study

Identifying and implementing new delivery strategies

A major UK government department faced a strategic choice in how it would continue to collect important economic data. Historically the data had been collected on a distributed basis by in-house staff and the methods of collection had remained unchanged for a number of years. There were pressures to review this approach on the grounds of improving the speed of availability and the quality of the data, and in order to demonstrate value for money.

The challenge was to advise the department, two other major government departments, and the Bank of England - all stakeholders in the use of this data - on how to explore options for alternative methods of collection and pre-processing. This analysis included not only the review of current and developing technologies, but also risk assessment of the various options and the definition of how a revised process might be implemented within government rules for assessing best value practice and potential outsourcing.

We therefore conducted a structured market review of the possible external sources of the skills required, including discussions with companies who had the latent skills but who were not active in this market.

In parallel we developed an eighteen-month project plan that fully involved all the stakeholders and which, if fully implemented, might result in the contracting of some services externally.

We were then asked to project manage this review with a primary role of maintaining the strategic focus of the project and a clear picture of the internal and external strategic environments. In this we tested the efficacy of proposed technologies, developed internal and external communication plans, and advised the department on all the actions required from drafting a specification to letting the contract to the successful bidder. Key features were the use of external information to re-shape the purchase environment and internal information to demonstrate to would be purchasers where they would also have to modify their approach.