All work needs to have a business reason. The two key reasons are:

Improved customer service such as those below. There can be more than one reason

• Increasing take up of services among key groups to achieve targets
• Making it easier to access services
• Giving a better service
• Giving a service targeted to individual needs
• Giving access to a broader range of services

Improving efficiency by one or more of:

• Increasing take up among key groups to increase income
• Increasing early take up and reducing more expensive interventions later
• Improving processes to streamline services and reduce costs (including one touch contact)
• Switching customers to more cost efficient channels

The definition should include the specific services involved and where possible should link to the Local Government Service List so you can take advantage of information held within esd toolkit such as existing customer profiling and process mapping which has been done by other authorities.

Example

For example in West Flanders there is a website providing information to childcare so that parents can find provision that suits them. However local councils know that there are some groups of people who are not getting childcare and therefore not able to start work. Generally these are families on low incomes or new ethnic communities.

The business question is therefore “How do we get more children from low income families into childcare?”. It is quantifiable as you can measure the level of take up before and after the work. Its key aim is to increase take up in a targeted group.

What Leiedal now needed to do was to identify what the research questions are which underlie this business question. The first is “who and where are the groups who are not taking up childcare?” This requires some research to find out where there are families with children who are eligible for childcare but not getting it.

The second question is “Why are they not accessing childcare?” This can be for a number of reasons:

• They do not know it is available
• They cannot afford it
• They cannot use the online system
• They cannot find childcare suitable to their needs – age, cost, location
• They are using other childcare facilities that are not on the system

Once you find out the answers to these questions you can decide what sort of intervention is needed – is it a marketing issue, is it about the online system, is it about availability or suitability of childcare, is it not a problem because there is alternative provision?
The research should also tell them how big the problem is in terms of underuse and what the unit cost of the changes may be.

To determine if it is cost effective to make the changes they also need to know the cost of not doing it. What is lost to the system in terms of underemployment and welfare benefits of people not getting into work.

The Smart Cities project has developed a series of Project Documents based on PRINCE templates which will be useful in defining the business question and the customer profiling project.