Delivering grant services

The Centre for Digital Public Services (CDPS) works alongside other organisations within Welsh Government  to create public services founded upon the needs of the people who use them

During 2021, we have been working with the Centre for Digital Public Services (CDPS) supporting the delivery of grant services in Wales. We led a Discovery and Alpha looking at how to increase the reach and impact of their community grants.

The focus of the discovery was to understand the needs of users and their pain points with the existing grants process. Alongside this we sought to map organisational objectives for grants, how impact was measured and an overall mapping of grants and their processes. 

We began with an eight-week discovery bringing in members of CDPS to the core team to upskill the organisation. We quickly defined the problem statement, key user groups and the goals for the discovery phase. This enabled a clear and shared understanding of ‘success’ for this phase as a team and with our sponsors. 

We used a variety of research methods to gain a holistic understanding of the needs of our user groups. Over the eight weeks of research we conducted 59 evaluations and had survey responses from over 200 community groups. We also tested how we could reduce the data collection of the organisation to only essential data needed to make effective decisions and measure the impact of investments.

We worked with over 15 other organisations across public, private and third sectors across the United Kingdom, understanding their delivery experience of grants both for the needs of users and technical platform delivery. 

The technical options analysis enabled clear recommendations on how to ensure a grants platform could scale and deliver a simple and intuitive service.

Finally, we presented back our recommendations and findings in January 2022, our recommendations were accepted and we will begin the Beta phase and delivery of a grants platform next month.