Traded Services Online (2014) - Product Manager
The Customer: Local Government
The Users: School Leaders, School Administrators, Service Providers
The Challenge
A continuing privatisation of Government services since 2010 meant that school services formerly provided solely by Local Government, such as estate management, security and technology, were opened up to private sector competition. From then on, schools would be responsible for budget allocation; they could opt, or not, to invest in innovation, choose a digital-based customer service and trust in the Cloud to deliver regulatory data privacy compliance. The shake-up presented possibilities for positive change but also dilemmas.
We seized an opportunity to bring together Schools, Service Providers and Government to identify how best we could bring value, building on our track record in successful digital transitions for clients.
The Approach
For their new responsibilities, School Leaders needed to recast themselves as consumers and I began with a series of individual interviews, to understand their concerns about incoming changes. From there, I spoke with administrators, who would be primary end users of a newly created digital platform; teachers, who would be the primary recipients of the procured services; and governors, who would hold legal responsibility for the procured services.
Making the concept of ‘business change’ palatable for schools was our biggest challenge. I drew on my interviews with pilot schools to understand perceptions of roles, responsibilities and risks before, during and after the process of change.
Key Insights
- Training is key: Work to ensure School Managers feel fully involved in a change process and know how to build a strong case for their future decisions.
- Adopt a policy to use plain English in printed documents: Legal terminology and industry jargon can intimidate users with little or no commercial experience. Suppliers should simplify the language they use in service agreements, to make it easier to compare two or more offers and reduce the need and cost of legal advice.
- Assign accountability to the proper level: Local Government as regulator should hold ultimate legal responsibility in matters related to quality and school. Set clear escalation paths to follow, if necessary.
The Outcome
School managers hold the power to prioritise and plan for their own school’s future, based on their own challenges, priorities and culture rather than those imposed by the government bureaucracy.
By opening up services to competition they have more choice and lower costs allowing budgets to be allocated where they have the most impact; in the classroom.
