Timetable and process for development of the Digital Mentors bid

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

Final Digital Mentor specification issued

The next stage of the digital mentors process is now underway, with the specification for the tender now sent out to the 5 consortia bidding for the fund.

You can download a PDF of the document here.

We hope that all Voiceboxers will take a good look at the document and see how they could contribute, both in terms of ideas and also where they could take a lead in developing that part of the bid and being an integral part of the consortium delivering it.

Please do leave your comments in this post - or write a blog post of your own. If you haven’t got an account to do this, all you need to do is email admin@voice-box.org.uk to get one.

Next steps for the Voicebox partnership

Whilst we await a decision from CLG on our Expression of Interest, we thought it would be good to outline our thoughts on next steps for taking the Voicebox partnership forward (in hopeful anticipation that the EOI will get through…).

Thanks to those of you who have expressed an interest in being involved in the partnership, either through the Digital Mentor blog or by signing up to the Contribute section of this site. To save those of you who have already inputted via digitalmentor.org, we’ve automatically transferred your details across so that there’s a single list of potential partners.

As you may know, our original plan was to appoint workstream leads before the Expression of Interest was submitted on 24 November. However, we decided to delay a decision on this, as it became clear that we should focus on our approach first and getting that right before assigning roles. It also gives people who have come to this later in the day - particularly those who came to the CLG workshop on 19 November - an opportunity to get involved.

We’d really like to spend the next fortnight focusing on developing the ideas for the approach to the project - particularly the criteria for the Digital Mentors - before making decisions about funded roles within the partnership. We do appreciate this will leave some of you in a state of limbo but this feels like the right thing to do. We’ve acknowledged that the open innovation process isn’t easy, but are committed to seeing it through.

It would be really useful to have a face to face meeting bringing together all those with an interest in being part of the Voicebox partnership - please watch this space for further information.

In the meantime, we’d like to encourage you to contribute your thoughts and ideas as to how the project should develop, either under specific workstream headings or as part of the ‘Big picture’ section. You can either comment on what has already been posted, or write your own blog post. Just email admin@voice-box.org.uk to set this up.

If you haven’t already signed up as a potential partner, it’s not too late to do so - just click on Contribute and register your details. Thanks to everyone who is joining us in this endeavour - it is shaping up to being a really interesting journey for all of us!