Community Grants - Low Code Pilot

Final Output

Plan

What we were doing

Approach

Research and interviews

What users said

Prototypes and what users said

Low code building - a bit about it

Testing with users

Metrics to measure

Recommendations roadmap

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Intro

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We are delivering a 12-week project focused on meeting user needs relating to the community grant process while piloting the use of a low code platform.

There are a number of pain points within the Community Grants process:

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• No visibility of NCCs full grant provision
• Different methods of applying and processing used to manage the applications
• These are not based on user needs
• Applicants have no visibility of the stage of their application
• When not a manual process, different technologies are used but these are often legacy based software and require technical workarounds/integration.
• No validation for fraud and auditability is difficult

TPXimpact (formerly FutureGov) are managing the delivery of the project and conducting user research.

Netcall are providing their LibertyCreate Lowcode platform and professional services to help Newcastle build a community grants prototype.

Newcastle ICT team are also running an evaluation of the Lowcode platform in parallel to see if this could replace and consolidate some of our existing off the shelf applications.

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Gemma Currie

Jenny Nelson

Paul Doney

Harrison Blackmore

Portia McLaughlan

David Tweddle

Tom Lowndes

TPXimpact

Joe Bradshaw

TPXimpact

Newcastle

Newcastle

Newcastle

Netcall

Netcall

DLUHC

Team

Project goals

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• Conduct user research with grant applicants and Newcastle City Council staff who work on community grants to identify their user needs and challenges with the current process.
• Design prototypes for the low code solution and test with users.
• Test the low code solution with users.
• Create a high level roadmap for the future of community grants in Newcastle.

Approach to project

Recap

User research

Designed prototypes

Mapped processes

We mapped the current and future processes for Newcastle CC staff and applicants

We designed wireframes on Miro and moved to higher fidelity prototypes in Figma.

Build & test

Designs and been built in Low Code and tested with applicants and officers

Spoke to 11 Newcastle CC staff who are involved in processing fund applications and 4 applicants who recently applied for grants

We extracted insights and findings from the research

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Interviews

Interviews

• We spoke to 11 people from Newcastle Council working across 5 funds
• We spoke with 1 Newcastle Fund applicant and have another 5 interviews scheduled
• We covered an array of questions around verification, the process for applicants and challenges faced
• We have reached out to applicants and have sessions arranged this week and next

Making sense of what we heard

After the interviews we drew out quotes and notes from the sessions and iterated process maps for the different grants

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Mapping

// Internal processes and systems

// What it feels like for applicants

Mapping applicant and staff journeys

Being aware

of grants

Deciding what grants is best

Applying for a grant

Waiting for a response

Receiving a response

Word of mouth, online, networks, non for profits

Online search (Newcastle website and VCS)

Providing information and details

Editing incorrect information

Verifying applicants information and details

Asking for changes in application

Send applicants info to panels

(int/ external)

Waiting for a response from panels

Internal / External Panels make final decision

Finance systems and payment forms

Making / Receiving final decision

Receiving a final decision via letter or email

Sending out a final decision letter/email

applicant

officers

others

Findings & Insights

Applicant Insights

Deciding what grant

is best for you

Applying for a grant

Community grants online information is scattered in different places and hard to navigate for applicants who are desperate for support.

Application forms (online and offline forms) lack clear guidance and simplicity, often ending up with applicants providing the incorrect data or documentation. There needs to be more guidance on how to fill in the form to avoid mistakes like filling in the wrong bank details or statement.

Most online application forms (except Rocket Science) need to be filled

in one go without applicants knowing what information is expected of them. Applicants end up losing information and have to start from scratch.

Application forms need to be more accessible to diverse communities with different needs by using simple language, content whilst providing guidance and support.

There needs to be clear guidance and guidelines. The eligibility criteria needs to be very clear so organisations don’t spend a huge amount of time and resources applying for funding they’re not eligible for.

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Applicant

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What often happens is applicant will start filling in the form and find out they don’t have all the information or documentation needed. So they end up losing all the data they’ve already filled out. Applicants need to be able to save their application forms and come back to it later.”

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Officer

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Applicant Insights

Waiting for a response

Applicant are left in the dark, not knowing where they are in the process. They don't have any visibility of their application status and there is no transparency on the work officers are doing in the background.

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Currently the council isn't pointing rejected applicants to other grants that would be more suitable. Applicants would benefit from being pointed in the right direction and increase the number of 'rightful' applicants.

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Receiving a response

“ I don't there's not a there's not a sort of process for just your reply to their email saying ‘I'm still waiting for information to make a decision’.

I mean, there's some applications I've got now that I'm still waiting for the counsellors decision

since April.

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Officer

“ An applicant applied to the a grant that he’s not eligible for. If you could refer it to The Newcastle Fund and say ‘Can you have a look at this one’ because at the moment what we just say to applicants is ‘I’m sorry, you're not eligible’

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Officer

Officer Insights

Verifying that applicants have provided all the necessary details and documentation correctly is the most time consuming part of the process as it is currently being done manually by officers. It would save officers a lot of time if it could be more automated.

Applicants often enter incorrect details into their application forms. This leads to officers having to go back and forth in order to make changes and complete the verification process. This often ends up delaying the verification and the final decision made by the council.

Verification process

“ Quite often applicants don’t submit all the documents needed, so we have to go back to them and ask for it.”

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Officer

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“We also asked for a bank account to confirm the bank detail the bank statements already to confirm the bank details. It's amazing how often people type the account number in wrong.

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Officer

Officer Insights

As most communication is email based, officers spend a lot of time manually copy & pasting applicant details into internal spreadsheets because the forms being used aren't linked to a database or back end system.

Using internal spreadsheets as a way of storing data can feel insecure and it doesn't offer enough functionality beyond simply recording the data.

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Building a dynamic and robust internal system that automates certain tasks and provides officers with an overview of applicants information could massively free up officers time. e.g automated acceptance/rejection letters, automated emails....

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Although the systems being used by different grants very, the processes are very similar and the council and staff could benefit from standardising the systems being used.

Internal Processes and systems

Applicants apply using a form, which is just a Word document that we have online. They download it, fill it in and email it to us. It's not linked to any kind of database or back end. So I just use a spreadsheet because it's what was available. But I have a lot of concerns about sharing it with other people because the data in spreadsheets is so insecure and one can accidentally delete sensitive information.

Officer

Anything that would save us time as it’s just the two of us. We just need a robust system. Needs to be something quite dynamic as when we’re assessing it needs to be uploaded straight away.

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Officer

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User stories

What is a user story? 📖

User stories are a great way to hand over features to development teams.

They should always include:

• the person using the service (the actor)
• what the user needs the service for (the narrative)
• why the user needs it (the goal)

They’re usually written in the format:

As a… [who is the user?]�I need/want/expect to… [what does the user want to do?]�So that… [why does the user want to do this?]

These map to our insights

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As an officer I need to…

Automatically send emails out to applicants (e.g status of their application)

Point applicants to other grants when their application is rejected

Quickly understand what information has been entered incorrectly

Be able to share the application form with others in the organisation

Automate my communication with applicants so they can edit incorrect information

Because applicants often enter the wrong details into their application forms, officers have to go back and forth in order to make changes and complete the verification process. This often ends up delaying the verification and the final decision made by the council.

Application form

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As an applicant I need to…

Have more guidance on what documents need to be provided

Understand what information is going to be needed before applying

Be able to save my ongoing applications and come back to them later

Use different mediums to upload evidence

(e.g video, audio)

Be able to come back and edit the information whenever needed

Download and share the application form with others in my organisation

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Be able to write/upload as much info as I see fit (no character or file size limit)

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View the status of my application

Application form

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As an applicant I need to… (continued)

• Understand the different types of grants available
• Find out what grants I'm eligible for
• Understand how to apply for grants
• Understand what the application process looks like
• Understand what information is being asked
• Have more guidance on what documents need to be provided
• Be able to save my on-going application and come back to it later
• Be able to share the application form with others in the organisation

• Download and share the form with other organisations
• Be able to come back and edit the information whenever needed
• Be able to write/upload as much info as I see fit (no character or file size limit)
• Use different mediums to upload evidence (youth fund- video, audio)
• Confirm my application was received
• View the status of my application
• Understand what the council is doing in regards to my application
• Be pointed to others grants/VCS if my application is rejected

Application form

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As an officer I need to…

Securely store applicants data

Have an overview of all applications and its detail

Quickly understand what information has been entered incorrectly

Securely share applicants data with external/internal panels

Automate my communication with applicants so they can edit incorrect information

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Automatically send emails out to applicants (e.g status of their application)

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Point applicants to other grants when their application is rejected

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Prioritised Grants

for the Low code

Pilot prioritisation

What we considered:

• Feasibility

What can be achieve in the project timeframes aligning with the different grants rounds and process

• Urgency

What are the grants that are in the biggest need of redesign (from both applicant and staff perspective)

• Cost savings for the council

What grants redesign could mean cost saving for the council

Prototypes

Prototypes

• We used Figma to create some early prototypes for the new community grant forms.
• These prototypes are great for concept testing with users as they can easily be edited.
• The prototypes were also what Netcall used to build the real thing.

GDS styling

• When designing our prototypes we followed the GDS design system.
• This design system has been tried and tested across government, follows accessibility guidelines and is very familiar to users.

Example prototypes

"Being able to save the form and come back to it later is great, it's really helpful. If I'm sick or on leave one of my colleagues can pick it up and submit the form"

Applicant

"Seeing the status of your application on the dashboard is really helpful."

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Applicant

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"You could upload documents and policies into your profile page and have them as default for your application."

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Applicant

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Testing with users

What we tested

Applicant

• Logging into the portal
• Completing the application form

Officer

• Reviewing applications
• Sending applications to counsellors
• Accepting/rejecting applications

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6 participants (4 Applicants, 2 Officers)�6x 45 minute sessions

What we couldn’t test

• Receiving + actioning email links
• Saving the form and returning to it later
• Accessing the form from the NCC website

Short sessions and limited functionality at the time of testing meant we couldn’t test every part of an applicants process.

Findings - detail (applicants)

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Logging in/’New service request’

• Participants didn’t understand the ‘Service group’ and ‘service’ input fields on the ‘New service request page’. 1 participant was confused at the drop down list named ‘service area’ if there is already the ability to select the Ward committee grant below.
• One participant said that a link to the guidance information for the particular form should be easy to find.

Completing the application form

• Generally, the questions were well understood in terms of their wording, requirements and format
• Two participants suggested a word limit would be necessary for the questions with open text fields. Particularly the ‘project details’ section.

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Previewing the form

One participant suggested that some kind of preview of the upcoming questions (or entire form) would be necessary as they would frequently have to gather information from multiple people for different parts of the form.

This was a raised as a user need previously, but characteristics of the low-code platform meant that it couldn’t be implemented within the scope of the MVP build.

We recommend returning to this user need in a future phase of the project. The participant suggested even a PDF of the form as a downloadable document at the start could be just as useful.

Findings - detail (applicants)

• Council priorities section: One participant suggested that there was not enough options to choose from. Specifically, an option for working with young people/reducing antisocial behaviour. “the priorities are quite difficult to meet”
• ‘View ward committee priorities’ link is not working, one participant would find it necessary to view these.
• Participants required more supporting/guidance text beneath open text field questions and uploading of evidence. (e.g. word limit, examples, pointers).
• ‘What happens next’ text was well received and considered helpful.
• One participant said the text sizing was too small on the user area (citizen hub)
• Generally, participants knew how to navigate around the product in it’s entirety (logging in, selecting ‘Make new application’, viewing previous applications)
• Participants responded very well to the ‘what happens next’ content at the end of the form. However, there was a sense that further updates on the status of their application would be be necessary.

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One participant (regular applicant of the ward committee grant) was extremely happy with the form and the system:

• “Extremely easy, much easier than doing the paper form”
• “This is absolutely brilliant” [specifying funding required by ward, as previously they would have to fill out a new application for each ward]
• “so simple and smooth”
• This participant would like to see the monitoring aspect of the process considered at some point. “your monitoring form is due next week” as a notification would be useful to them.

Key takeaways

• Generally, the application form was well understood in terms of it’s wording, requirements and format.
• Some suggestions that word limits and better supportive text on some questions was needed.
• Participants generally had little to no difficulty logging in and making their way to the relevant form. However, there was some confusion around finding the relevant grant.
• One participant suggested that some kind of preview of the upcoming questions (or entire form) would be necessary as they would frequently have to gather information from multiple people for different parts of the form.
• Some minor difficulties completing specific questions (Council priorities).
• Generally, participants were pleased with the alpha product by suggested that it would be extremely useful and a drastic improvement on the current processes.

“Extremely easy, much easier than doing the paper form”

“This is absolutely brilliant” [specifying funding required by ward, as previously they would have to fill out a new application for each ward]

“so simple and smooth”

• Regular applicant of the Ward Committee Grant

Overview of findings - officers

Insights

• What happens when there are multiple ‘abandoned’ applications? Questions around the difference between ‘incomplete’ and ‘abandoned’
• Helpful to be able to change document name so I can see what they are rather than having to open them all. A potential solution could be for some instructional text to the applicant on the form asking for documents to be named clearly.
• It would be useful for officers to have the option to add a supporting note when the applications are sent to the counsellors
• Should abandoned cases time out? There is a risk of the list becoming too big over time.

Future recommendation

A way to update applications to say ‘payments have been made’ and ‘success letter sent’ so that officers can see that cases have been completely resolved.

Overview of findings - officers

Requirement/requests

• Reference numbers to match the same conventions as currently used (WG/00 instead of CG/00).
• Uploaded documents in the ‘Account’ section to be visible to the officer.
• Bank details - need to be able to view applicants bank details because people just don’t send them when they’re requested. Sometimes money doesn’t get paid in that financial year and this causes problems. “If they’re approved we can pay them straight away”.
• Doesn’t quite make sense for the officer landing page to be the complete list of cases. If there was a way to see which applications are new at the top of the list that would be more helpful for officers.
• Can cases that require action be highlighted in some way? It’s currently unclear the status of applications in the list. Consider organising cases to be actioned at the top of the list, or something similar.

Counsellors must be able to approve a different amount of funding than what is requested in the application. Sometimes they are working with limited funds, but still want to support a project

Key takeaways

• The system provides all of the necessary functionality to meet the needs of the officers managing applications.
• Generally, the system was well received and officers were confident in it replacing the existing systems.

There were a number of minor adjustments thought to be necessary to implement before officers could confidently start using the system to manage applications including:

• The ability to add supporting notes to counsellors, not just applicants.
• Counsellors must be able to approve a different amount of funding to the amount requested.
• There was a general sense that sorting/categorising of cases by ‘actionable’ would be useful.
• Reference numbers to match the same conventions as currently used (WG00 instead of CG/00).

Metrics to measure

Metrics

We recommend that Newcastle measure the following metrics.

User satisfaction - users will be asked to rate their experience of using service. We will also ask users to provide feedback if they have any.

Time - with validation and automatic emails being built into the service, we hope the time from an application to get from start to finish will decrease.

Number of applications - the low code platform enables us to monitor the number of rejections and approved applications plus is able to identify bottlenecks in the process.

More metrics

Liberty Create can also measure the following. These may be particularly useful for the officers who administer the community grants.

• Management reporting - for example to establish how many cases of a certain type have been created in a designated time period
• Cases raised by type
• Cases completed on time vs overdue
• Cases approaching SLA
• Cases raised by channel
• New vs closed cases (per day for last 7 days)
• Case assignment (by team and employee) - by Group and by Assignee
• Ability for Service areas to see usage figures for forms within their area. For example total forms submitted (creating a case), forms abandoned and forms that fail for a technical reason
• Process analysis; such as:
• Display of bottlenecks in process
• Number of items at each stage and passed through each stage
• Average length of time to completion at each stage

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Recommended roadmap

Now

Next

Later

• Write missing content (TPX)

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Design

• GDS styling
• Word counts and q labels
• Form preview (pdf)
• Content review
• Officers interface changes

• Consider restructuring supportive/guidance text on NCC website.

Research

Technical

Grant

• More testing with applicants
• Mobile/tablet testing
• Monitor metrics

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• Continue testing and/or consulting with applicants and officers
• Comms plan

• Fix bugs/missing links
• How payment details will be shared to officers

• Technical training for officers on officer interface
• Accessibility review
• Citizen Hub level 2 training
• Penetration testing
• Payment integration

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• Monitoring integration
• Training other Newcastle staff members

• Ward Fund
• Air Quality Grants

• Youth Fund

• Covid Business Grants
• Newcastle Fund

Now

Missing content

• Write missing content (TPX)
• Adam (Ward grant) to supply email templates to be used for successful and unsuccessful applications.

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Fix bugs/missing links

• Fix broken link under ‘council priorities’ question (Ward grant) - Add link to list of council priorities.
• Missing mandatory fields across Ward grant form.

�Officer interface

• Officers must be able to view applicant’s bank details.
• Uploaded documents in the ‘Account’ visible to the officer.
• Counsellors must be able to approve a different amount of funding than what is requested in the application.

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Next

Design

Form preview (pdf)

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• Give users ability to download the form questions as a pdf prior to starting an application. Possibly this lives on the council website among the guidance information.

Content review

• Conduct content review covering all content within the application form and on the NCC website. Consider re-structuring the guidance information on the NCC website.

Officer interface

• Integrate ability to add supporting notes to counsellors, not just applicants.
• Reference numbers to match the same conventions as currently used (WG/00 instead of CG/00).

GDS styling

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• Apply GDS styling to account pages and login pages (all pages). Discuss opportunities for extra funding to support the development of GDS templates at Netcall.

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Word counts and q labels

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• Add word counts to all long text fields under ‘project details’ section.
• Include supporting text on questions requiring a document upload instructing applicants to name their files in a clear and useful manor. (e.g. ‘List of postcodes’)

Next

Technical

Research

More testing with applicants:

• Receiving + actioning email links
• Saving the form and returning to it later
• Accessing the form from the NCC website
• Mobile/tablet testing

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Monitor metrics

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• See slides 45 and 46
• NCC should monitor feedback from users
• Time taken for applications to run and number of accepted/rejected forms should also be monitored
• Reports can be generated in low code platform to monitor other metrics

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Technical training for officers on officer interface

Newcastle/Netcall to arrange sessions with staff from currently implemented (and future) grants

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Payment integration�Newcastle and Netcall to consider adding the payments part of the process into the system

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Other:

• Accessibility review
• Citizen Hub level 2 training
• Penetration testing

Later

Research

Technical

Design

Conduct a second round of interviews with applicants and officers including the areas we couldn’t test in the first round:

• Receiving + actioning email links
• Saving the form and returning to it later
• Accessing the form from the NCC website

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Consider reformatting the supporting/guidance content on the NCC website. Also consider how applicants are currently accessing the portal on the NCC website.

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Monitoring integration��Newcastle to work with grant officers and Netcall to implement the monitoring process into the system.

Other

• Training other NCC staff members
• Consider how best to ‘promote’ the new system to new grants

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Retrospective recommendations

We did a final retrospective with the team. One of the sections was ‘wishes for beta’.

These are some recommendations on how to approach the beta phase based on the wishes.

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A better comms tool: one particular item that came up in the retro was that the team did not have a tool to quickly speak to each other one. We recommend getting the whole team on Slack or MS Teams next time.

Gov.uk template for Low Code: a challenge in the alpha phase was the gov.uk style CSS styling. We recommend that a gov.uk template is created for Low Code.

Involving other local authorities: Low Code is a great platform and it would be great to show it off to other local authorities. In beta we recommend contacting more local authorities and inviting them to show and tells.

More face to face meetings: now that we are able to meet, we recommend more face to face meetings and workshops to encourage collaboration.

More communications: in order to engage more local authorities we recommend creating some blogs and weeknotes talking about the project and low code.