City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council

Outcome of Expression of Interest: Not shortlisted

We have developed Finance and Performance monitoring reports using Microsoft Power BI. The reports could be shared with other Councils quickly and cheaply. We also have a training package to get other Councils to a level of competency where they could maintain, improve, customise our reports to their needs, and develop their own reports/ performance framework.

The reports

  • significantly improve the quality of finance and performance monitoring and management
  • Are easily shared and adapted to other Councils data
  • Improve transparency – The link in the discovery section shows reports we currently publish.
  • Have the potential to save on IT costs – using one BI reporting tool where reports can be created and maintained by generalists (Finance Staff/ Business Analysts) rather than numerous systems requiring expensive specialists to develop reports.

We have created and rolled out a training package to develop, maintain, improve reports, and also a package for end user navigation. We also have a development work procedure to ensure common design, quality assurance levels, data security.

We seek to work with another Council to implement the above with them with a view to a wider sharing.

Discovery evidence

We developed reports in consultation with 30 end user budget managers.

We prototyped and iteratively tested the solution.  We have now gone live, and have further enhancements in the pipeline which would have previously cost significant sums to create with IT consultants.

We recently demonstrated to West Yorkshire Councils and Sigoma, and found that most Councils were not as advanced both in terms of the accessibility of IT, nor the matching of financial inputs with service outputs and outcomes.

We are aware of another Council that has paid Consultants circa £1m to develop the type of reports we have produced and can share as part of this process.

We will work in partnership with any local authority(ies) that wishes to take part in this project – ideally local to Bradford – we would intend to assess/ prove/ finesse the ease of rolling out, to then enable wider sharing.

The link illustrates reports using open data that we publish – our aspiration is to add additional Finance and Performance data on Council services.

https://datahub.bradford.gov.uk/ebase/districtdashboardiyp.eb?ebd=0&ebp=10&ebz=1_1537959748966

  • Introduction to delivery management
  • Introduction to product management
  • Agile for teams