Business planning is the process that allows a strategic vision, objectives and priorities to be translated into operational action plans. Governance is how boroughs make sure those plans and make sure that all other borough policies are followed.

Inadvertently, governance and business planning can stifle innovation and prevent savings. This is often because inefficiencies and technical debt accumulate over time in  ‘Business As Usual’ (BAU) practices leading to outdated software and increased operational expenses which cost more than they should.

Although sometimes outside of their remit, digital leaders need to understand the total cost of delivering services to residents (not just IT costs) to best understand how strategic innovation can bring down those costs and increase efficiency.

By explicitly linking efficiency to service spend, and allowing projects to start small, quickly, and being tolerant of failure, business cases and governance can foster innovation.

Governance tips (things to avoid)

It is a mistake to focus on cost-only evaluation. New proposals should have tiered governance based on total IT project cost without a view of the potential benefits realisation or urgency or need of the project. If savings/efficiencies are explicitly linked to IT spend and borough-wide business plans then proposals can be properly contextualised for governance boards to make better decisions.

Governance procedures often give the lightest amount of scrutiny to BAU, assuming that prior business cases are still valid. Ironically this means the lightest amount of scrutiny on the biggest expenditure. Removing this light touch for large spend, will often unlock ideas and innovations where it is most needed and increasing scrutiny on BAU will often initiate innovation. 

Governance puts costs on projects and often the biggest cost is increased time to deliver the project. It helps where every step of governance has agreed short timelines for approval to minimise delays. A good way to check is to assume a project meets all your criteria and add up how long it would take to pass all governance steps. The longer this process is, the bigger the impact it is having on delivery.  

Another mistake is overloading the entry point to starting a new project. If the team wants to test something small scale, isolated from your network with no resident data involved, avoid putting  excessive upfront governance. If we accept that some innovative projects will fail, then this is a waste of everyone’s time. Save full governance for when an idea has proved itself and then subject it to full governance before any user data gets close to it.

Understand what you (and others) don’t know

Don’t assume that pre-deployment, you will be able to fully evaluate all parts of the technical or procurement solution. Make sure that you have room for your teams to try out and experiment with technology, processes and people before you fully commit to any particular path. Experimentation means failing and learning and succeeding and learning. So make sure your governance has room for both and does not penalise opening up about mistakes and dead-ends found. 

Where governance is conducted by non-experts, it is worth investing in building a relationship with the governance team so that they understand the context of the problem.To this end it can be helpful to avoid jargon and using app names as they will mean nothing to the governance team and not help them understand what you are trying to do. Instead, explain what it you are trying to do, how the proposed approach will help.

If the policy environment, requirements for services or outputs are subject to political control, then expect them to change during the life of the project. Do not base requirements on predictable outcomes and stable requirements or your teams may pick options that are hard to unpick later.

How you can make the process more supportive innovation, tolerant of failure and support test and learn

Start Small and Scale Up: All projects should begin small, with initial funds allocated to problem exploration and prototyping that may or may not lead to technology purchases but could influence future processes. Ideally, these projects should be linked to address specific “pinch points” that will unblock inefficiencies or reduce costs in the delivery of services. Working directly with your service teams will mean buy-in for the changes and eases the path to benefits realisation.

Support Experimentation: Encourage safe experimentation that protects resident data and promotes the adoption of new technologies leading to cost savings, process efficiencies, and improved resident services.

Integrate Process Change: Acknowledge that benefits often stem from process changes, which currently fall outside the project sign-off and approval process. LOTI advocates that councils think about effective change as entailing People, Tech, Data and Process, and each needs to be considered when designing and evaluating the potential impact of digital initiatives. 

Evaluate Risk vs. Reward: Explicitly consider the risk-reward profile of projects.

Focus on Impact: Prioritise the degree of impact (against the council’s goals) a successful outcome will have in relation to its governance.

Continuous Benefits Realisation Monitoring: Monitor benefits realisation throughout the entire project lifecycle, not just at handover, making sure that innovations developed during the project have the room to be incorporated. This will mean that any positive side effects that are seen in practice can be incorporated immediately and do not have to go back into governance.

Proportionality: Align the governance structure with the project’s size, impact, and need. Recognise that the “total cost from idea to completion is a known path” is a fiction.

Phased Approvals: Implement an “easy gate” for project initiation, with increasing rigour at clear checkpoints as the project progresses.

Defined Timescales: Establish clear approval timescales for each process, with minimised processes to allow for efficient progression, assuming trust in hiring.

Strategic Procurement: Reserve full procurement methods for high-value expenditure where software choices are established, proven, and essential. Push full procurement back as far as possible until functionality is certain, and prioritise desk-based competition G-Cloud awards.