Timetable and process for development of the Digital Mentors bid
December 18, 2008 by Ben Brown
As you’re aware, CLG has now sent us the Digital Mentors ITT, a copy of which is available to view here. You’ll note that the closing date for applications has been put back slightly to 5pm on Wednesday 4 February.
I would recommend reading the ITT as it provides valuable information about what the Digital Mentors programme should deliver, which may (subject to your feedback) affect the current thinking on how our bid should be built.
In terms of ‘the process’ moving forward, I propose:
- By Tuesday 6 January - to have received all your feedback on a preferred delivery model via the Voicebox blog. Please refer here for a couple of suggestions which have already been put forward by Anne Faulkner and Mike Amos-Simpson (thanks both!). NOW is your chance to critique these against the backdrop of what CLG wish to have delivered, or to propose new ones. Please add to the existing thread (link shown above) with any edits or new models you would like to have considered for the Voicebox bid.
- By Tuesday 6 January - for UK online centres to have received a clear indication from any organisation interested in a funded role to lead a workstream. Please note we are NOT seeking to identify ‘demonstrator projects’ or ‘trainers’ at this stage. We’ve reviewed the original list of workstreams against what we know now. We believe there are four key workstreams to deliver this work, as follows:
- Project Management of the programme (which includes within its remit ‘sustainability’ plus the project management of the ‘demonstrator projects’. This workstream will be delivered by UK online centres.
- Research and Mapping
- External communications
- Training and toolkits
We anticipate that there will be other funded roles supporting some of these workstreams, which will be considered after the workstream leads have been established.
Any organisations wishing to lead on one of the three remaining workstreams should email me (bbrown@ufi.com) no later than 5pm on Monday 5 January clearly identifying your workstream of choice. Shortly after, I will publish the names of the organisations that have contacted me on the Voicebox blog.
- On Thursday 15 January - The potential workstream leads will be invited to meet in London for a strategy session. The aim of the meeting will be to:
- Run through the delivery model, and sign it off
- Agree the role and responsibility of each workstream
- Agree the key tasks required by each workstream
We expect the session to cover a lot of ground; therefore please expect to be involved for the whole day. During the meeting, we’ll announce the process for the appointment of the workstream leads itself.
- By noon on Tuesday 20 January - this will be the deadline for the submission of a short application form for workstream lead candidates.
- By close of business Wednesday 21 January - The UK online centres bid writing team will make the final decision on who will lead each of the work streams.
- On Friday 23 January - meeting of all collaborators in the Voicebox bid in London to clarify ideas about the Digital Mentors approach
- Wednesday 4 February - Deadline for response to the ITT
Thanks for this Ben, sounds a reasonable timeline to me (although the 15th clashes with our January company meeting - argh). I should be able to spend some serious time on this over the next two weeks with all our LA customers on holiday.
Looking forward to contributing.
Ben
Timelines seem sensible, I’ll email you my thoughts on lead roles in early Jan. As I suspected the tender information is as clear as mud, enough detail to hang oneself and some crucial points left in the air.
As commented before its not a huge amount of monies and part of the trick is probably how well this activity can piggy back on other initiatives and achieve economies of scale. I suppose deciding how much is allocated to demonstrators is a tricky issue and also how many would be sought - real problem geting balance between quality and quantity.
Huge amount listing demands on digital mentors but precious little in the way of suggestions as to why on earth someone would be encouraged to take on that role. What can we create or offer that would draw in and retain such people.
Also some desired possible outcomes eg an expectation of working in communities where no community vehicle exists or source equipment, seem to bear little realistic link to the actual 2 year timescale (a lot shorter by the time everyone is in place or alternative funders make decisions). There appear to be dangers of offering to please and do things that are stretching it, so keeping feet on the ground and constructing an interested but achievable spectrum of activity will be important.
Terry
The organisations listed below have put themselves forward to lead on the following work packages:
Research and Mapping:
Birmingham City University, Citizens Online, Particitech, eQuality Networks
External Communications:
Community Media Association, CSV Media (CSV Action Network), Media Trust, Opportunity Links
Toolkits and Training: Citizens Online, Institute of Digital Innovation (Univ. of Teesside), Novas Scarman Group, Ruralnet, View 2 a Skill, We Share Stuff
As mentioned in earlier posts, UK online centres will lead the Project Management work package.
We’ll be in touch separately with each of the organisations listed above to convene a meeting on Thursday 15-Jan in London. During that meeting we’ll start making key decisions on how the bid will be shaped, including the roles and responsibilities of the work packages themselves.
Keep an eye on this site for further developments as they emerge and please continue the excellent work in contributing to the strategic direction and tactical content of the bid itself – your thoughts and suggestions are very much appreciated!
Hi everyone,
I’m sorry it’s been a bit quiet on the Voicebox blog recently. We’ve been really busy meeting with organisations who have expressed an interest in leading on one of the work streams and getting into the swing of bid writing. However, although we’ve still got a lot to do, I think we’ve got a bid that’s coming together nicely, thanks in a large way to the comments and suggestions you’ve put forward.
We had a great meeting in London last week when we met with a range of organisations to discuss the delivery model as well as the key roles of the various work streams. We refined the Model, a copy of which can be seen at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/33342139@N08/3215275038/
You’ll note that both the Research and Mapping and Training phases span the life of the project. This is to recognize the ‘formative evaluation’ approach we will take in delivering the project. We also discussed the timing to commission funded projects. We see that the early remit of the Research and Mapping lead is to perform a gap analysis, so we expect to be in a position to commission a small and discrete number of funded projects earlier in the process than first thought.
We’ve renamed the ‘1000 flowers’ concept to read ‘incubator projects’. This will more accurately describe the fact that the incubators will be carefully tended rather than to be left to their own devices to either flourish or wither and die.
We discussed how digital mentors, once recruited, would feed into a bank of trainers and would then in turn train other digital mentors.
We also discussed how the trainers, mentors and mentees fit together for this bid, which is represented in the diagram shown at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/33342139@N08/3215276896/in/photostream/ The diagram is designed to clear up some confusion over terminology by showing how the communities get served by the digital mentors, who in turn are served by trainers - and then how the demonstrator projects allow for opportunities in progression through the ranks.
NEXT STEP:
We think it’s key to share with you the range of tasks that will be owned by the various work stream lead organisations. We aim to have these recruited by the weekend, and have plans in place to meet with these early next week. At that point we will put the range of key tasks that each organisation will be responsible for on the blog – watch this space!
AND FINALLY…. A REQUEST!
We believe that the open collaborative approach we have taken is absolutely the right thing to do for this project, and we want to be able to show to CLG in our bid submission that we have the support from a range of organisations across the spectrum. With that in mind, I would like to request that if your organisation feels that this bid is the right one to support, we’d really appreciate a Letter of Support which we can print off and submit with the bid.
So, if you would like to take part, please could you email me a short note, using your organisation’s letterhead to say that your organisation supports our approach and, should our application be successful, would seek to support UK online centres to make the project delivery a success.
Alternatively, we’d love to receive a letter via snail mail to:
Ben Brown
UK online centres
The Quadrant
99 Parkway Avenue
Parkway Business Park
Sheffield
S9 4WG
I look forward to hearing from you!
Hi Ben - Maybe this kind of detail isn’t appropriate yet at this stage, but I’m unsure of how you intend to deliver the programme in a practical sense and whether theres likely to be any role for young people or those working with them in the programme? (I do like the models though)
If so it would be helpful to get some practical ideas of ways that you envisage for delivery approaches and methods and who they may (or may not) include.
Either way I’m happy to send over a letter of support.
The Voicebox bid is in!
At the risk of ‘doing a Gwyneth Paltrow’ we couldn’t let the opportunity pass without thanking every contributor on this blog for their comments, criticisms and goodwill messages. The collective thoughts from an incredibly wide-ranging group of organisations and individuals have been fundamental to the development of the final bid, so thank you one and all for your insights and guidance.
As the lead organisation in the group, UK online centres has found the process incredibly valuable and we’ve been especially pleased to have received so many letters of support from organisations who are supportive of the approach we’ve taken here.
Of course, it’s not always perfect – for example we haven’t yet announced here on the blog the organisations that we chose to lead the work streams, should we win. So let me put that straight for you now.
Leading the Research and Mapping work stream will be Citizens Online.
The Training and Toolkits will be lead by two organisations: Ruralnet|uk and Opportunity Links.
Another big thank you to all the other organisations that put themselves forward to lead one of the work streams; your skills wont be wasted if we win!
Naturally we’ll be in touch again with any news as we get it. From what we understand, the evaluation process starts next week so we should learn which of the five bids will be chosen to deliver the Digital Mentors project very soon.
[...] on Voicebox Ben Brown confirms who will be doing what, if their bid succeeds. Citizens Online will be leading the Research and [...]