Our workshop goals
After completing our content review of funding line names for the Adult skills fund (ASF) and Advanced learner loans (ALL) allocation statements, we wanted to investigate the following:
- who creates funding line names in the Calculate Funding Service (CFS), what sources do they use, and is there a ‘single source of truth’?
- why is naming inconsistent currently and what are the preferred terms?
- what is the meaning of terminology such as 'contract', 'grant' and ‘of which’ included in the statements?
- why does the naming of ‘continuing learners in newly devolved areas’ change from one year to the next? Is it important to show these changes?
- how are funding lines ordered and is this important?
- how is the CFS calculation standard used?
- what are the wider impacts of changing funding line names – both for CFS users and outside the team?
- who needs to be consulted on any naming conventions that are created, and at what point are they signed off?
To begin gathering answers, we needed to talk to Operational Excellence users of CFS – specifically those working to deliver adult funding allocations. However, we were aware that their availability was limited. We decided to run a 2-hour workshop to gain as much understanding as possible in a time-efficient way.
We used this time to:
- understand where we could make changes to support the development of data-driven statements
- see if our proposed data-driven processes would help to solve some of our Operational Excellence users’ current pain points
- get a better understanding of areas that will need further work
Our overarching goal for the workshop was to gather the information needed to create a clear, agreed process that will work for these users and support our minimum viable product (MVP).
What we did
After introducing our users to the research and design work we’ve done so far, we validated our understanding of the funding template creation process in CFS and asked them to fill in any knowledge gaps. We also asked follow-up questions about steps in their processes that were relevant to generating data-driven statements.
Next, we looked at mock-ups of ‘ideal’ ASF and ALL allocation statements alongside our current prototype and the live statements in Manage your Education and Skills Funding (MYESF). We talked through the gaps and explored how to solve known sticking points such as:
- generating human-readable funding line names
- funding lines displaying zero totals
- ordering funding lines
Our workshop findings
The workshop gave us a much better understanding of how Operational Excellence colleagues create their statement templates. We also got valuable insights into how CFS works, and where this creates constraints.
It was especially useful to learn more about generating funding line names using CFS. Our colleagues told us that:
- they create the names, using the funding rules as their guide
- names need to be unique to ensure they can be understood internally as well as by providers, and for calculations to run correctly
- names that are too long are not readable in the CFS interface and cause issues with calculations
- each funding line has a code which is assigned manually and an ID that is automatically assigned – and it causes issues to change them
- it’s not currently possible to reorder funding lines as this is known to ‘break’ the logic used in CFS
- indicative and actual figures are published at different points in the year, and we needed to iterate our proposed funding line names so providers can tell which is which (something that is not possible in current statements)
- users need to be signposted to guidance from the statement, so they know what to do if something doesn’t look right
More generally, Operational Excellence colleagues also told us:
- they experience pain points, and have had to develop workarounds, due to functional limitations present in CFS
- they, like end users, need to see the calculation data that underpin the totals
- there is no contextual guidance within CFS for users
- changes to contextual guidance displayed in statements can be made without impacting CFS processes
Actions for the UCD and technical teams
The workshop gave us a clear steer on where to focus our efforts as UCD and technical teams. We could now begin or continue the work to:
- investigate how we could produce human-readable funding line names in CFS
- investigate whether procured and grant funding can be separated on the statement using CFS data
- explore whether character limits could be increased in CFS
- explore the feasibility of changing the funding line order in CFS
- create recommendations for the funding line order, based on testing with users
- review the rules around showing ‘information’ type funding lines
- signpost to guidance or further information in the statement
- make other content changes and recommendations
- confirm the ‘owners’ and point of sign off for any changes to funding line names in statements
And while it’s out of scope for this beta, it has helped us to begin exploring how we automate data to show funding calculations – a priority for both Operational Excellence colleagues and end users.