In local government, it can feel like there is never a good time to start the procurement  to replace your existing technology contracts. Whenever you start you are told you should have started earlier – researching the market, conducting your pre-market engagement, putting out tender notices, etc.

Working to a procurement deadline to replace or renew a tech contract runs the risk that teams forget that technology is a ‘supporting’ function to the services you deliver to your residents. The people, processes and data are as, if not more important as the technology they use. 

However, local government needs IT and software contracts to provide the services they give to residents, so when and where is the best place to start and what should you begin by doing?

The best time to start

Now.

And it starts with having a deep understanding of user needs.

Put user needs first

Councils have legal obligations to provide services to residents. However, how they choose to deliver these services is up to them.

We’ve talked about the benefits of using service design before to rethink what we do and how we do it. Quite simply, before we can have a sensible conversation about what technology we need, we first need to be clear on what needs we need to meet, and whether our current service model is still fit for purpose.The services that are currently running may be out of date (not making the best use of current technology or providing what residents need any more). Starting with a deep understanding of the user needs can help steer discussions about what interventions are best placed to deliver the legally mandated services and meet those needs. 

Working backwards from user needs puts technology, staff time and delivery methods into context and helps us better understand what we need them to do.  It is a mistake to assume that software suppliers have the best service pattern and you need to implement their software ‘as is’ and change your work pattern to match it.  

You might think of the specific combination of people, processes, data and technology that provide your service as a ‘service jigsaw’. Without mapping out all these parts, you won’t be able to properly control and understand your service, nor will you have a good idea of what you need to go to market for. This planning of this ‘service jigsaw’ should unify the service team, the technology and the IT team. Once mapped out, it is a very powerful tool and can be used to allow you to take strategic decisions and guide your procurement .

If you don’t currently have a Service Designer, you can use our design sprint toolkits to help you better understand your current and future desired processes.

So when is the right time to start procurement?

The formal procurement process is a set of procedures that need to be undertaken when it is envisaged a big contract is to be let. It is formulaic and bound by legislation like the Procurement Act 2023. One of the steps of this procedure is pre-market engagement. 

Requirements gathering is one of the first stages of procurements anyway, so what’s the problem?

Engaging with the market before understanding your user needs and the best way to support them through interventions is a mistake. Although in formal procurement requirements gathering is one of the first steps, whose requirements they are is not always clear. The service team will usually want the current system cheaper, better, faster. However, users may want a completely different service from the one that exists today.

Starting pre-market engagement before you’ve understood the user needs is problematic. To attract suppliers to your engagement sessions you need to tell them the size of the contract you are considering. Put a big enough target and many will come to you, quoting for technology they have and not the whole service redesign that you should be thinking of. The fit between their technology and what you need it for will have to be borne by you and to best understand that you will need to understand how your technology and service fits together. Without a service jigsaw, you won’t have a handle on these costs.

Also, you have an option here to consider that the right response to what was originally thought of as a large procurement exercise might actually be no procurement at all and that is a challenging idea for procurement teams and the market.

Making room for radical options

When one understands the user needs, the legal requirements and the full range of options should always include the scope for more radical options. But if you tell people you are prepared to spend millions to attract them to your event, your suppliers will quote ideas in the millions. If you tell suppliers that you might not spend anything near that amount, then suppliers won’t come and you won’t get information from the market on what you could do.

So what can you do?

1. Build the ‘Service Jigsaw’ map

Technology sovereignty is when you as the provider of a service to the public have control over the technology stack to sufficient degree to make unilateral changes to it based on your needs. It takes away over dependence on suppliers and means that you retain the freedom to change how the service works, what technology it uses and whether you automate or keep manual processes to support it. The Service Jigsaw means building this  technology sovereignty through awareness of how your service functions, what levers you have to change it and how dependent on the supplier you are. 

In your current system, understand what services support your system, how teams use the technology to deliver their interventions and how you are measuring success. In particular double check that your metrics and the service outcomes are aligned.

Put this against your ideal Service Jigsaw. What is missing, what could be better, what is wrong? This helps with the next step:

2. Who is doing what?

On the ‘as is’ and ‘to be’ service jigsaw, work out who has current responsibility for it. Is it your team, a suppliers’ team or no-one?

Now decide how important it is and who is best to own this going forward. Understanding the role of the technology in your service and how important it is for you will determine what you are going to market for and why.

3. Look to the exit

Now you understand what role technology plays in your current system, you can see the dependencies and risks on your software/technology stack.

Work out migration plans where you chose to exit from software. Work out where dual running of a new system against an old one takes place. Can you reduce manual workarounds and move them to software? Can you remove complex technological fixes and move them to manual processes to reduce system complexity.

—

If you are interested in better understanding of the problems in procurement, join our in-person, closed-door discussion on innovative buying of systems and software on 10th March, where we will be diving deep into what is holding it back, and how we move forward from here. Visit the event page to register.