Virtual commissioning
Toni Badnall
Tuesday, January 5, 2021
Virtual commissioning is here to stay, and when done well there are benefits for commissioners and children, says Toni Badnall.
“Unprecedented times”, “the new normal”, “agile working”. How often have we heard these phrases in the last nine months? The Covid-19 pandemic has forced workers across all sectors to normalise very abnormal ways of working – remote from offices and colleagues with the boundaries between work and home life as blurred as our MS Teams backgrounds.
For commissioning, which depends on relationships, collaboration and innovation, moving those relationships to a context of the raised hand icon, the chat window and “you’re on mute” has been an uncomfortable shift. However, if done well, virtual commissioning can be beneficial both for commissioners and providers, and yield good outcomes for service users.
TOP TIPS FOR VIRTUAL COMMISSIONING
- Getting to grips with software is key to effective digital engagement. Many local authorities have a blanket policy against hosting events on Zoom due to data security concerns, but check with your ICT leads as some may be willing to accept its use for limited purposes with a robust risk assessment – this means more delegates can attend. Bedford has also made extensive use of ticketing platforms to manage registrations and communication. If you plan to record the event, ensure this is highlighted in the event’s registration privacy notice.
- There is a risk that the distance created by technology may shift commissioning processes from a relational to a transactional, procurement-based model. Commissioning relies on effective communication, and when this is done virtually openness and honesty are more important than ever. Be transparent about the objective of your engagement – for example, benchmarking, co-production, information-sharing – and its intended outcomes.
- Other elements of the commissioning cycle are increasingly moving online, and there are some excellent resources to support this. The Children’s Cross-Regional Arrangements Group has piloted a virtual Quality Assurance programme for residential and semi-independent provision, and the Commissioning Alliance has implemented an information-sharing platform that tracks Covid-associated risks in real time, which could be an invaluable resource for business continuity and contingency planning. Check what resources have been developed by partnership working arrangements in your own area.
Increase in engagement
Some parts of the commissioning cycle, particularly desktop analysis and procurement, have long gone digital. Early evidence from Bedford’s commissioned services suggests that shifting delivery to online channels has resulted in an increase in engagement, especially from young people. The pandemic has forced us into spaces already occupied by our client base, with surprisingly positive results.
Other activities have been more challenging. Two days after we first locked down, I was scheduled to deliver a sell-out procurement launch event for a fostering consortium tender. The following week, we were due to host residential and semi-independent provider forums with multi-agency and Department for Education representation. The suspension of face-to-face engagement – along with most strategic tendering activity – had the potential to be devastating for business.
Yet the day-to-day work of children’s social care continued unabated, and with it the need for urgent commissioning projects. Engaging with and stimulating provider markets on a large scale in this brave new world involved much trial and error, but the majority of suppliers were also learning and adapting. In the case of a recent domiciliary care tender, what started off as blanket emails to every organisation on the Care Quality Commission register within a 30-mile radius led to a summer of fruitful conversations as providers rang back for more details and new relationships began to form.
The feedback from these conversations gave us the evidence we needed to look at different types of contractual arrangements to deliver better sufficiency and value than traditional frameworks. In October 2020, we took the virtual experiment one step further and hosted the pre-procurement event for this tender on MS Teams – with more than 60 delegates from a local market previously assumed to be relatively stagnant.
Our postponed independent fostering agency event and provider forums also went ahead virtually. The nature of this kind of engagement has fundamentally changed, but it is too early to say whether this is for the better. To an extent, the opportunity for workshops and collaborative development has been replaced by sharing information via PowerPoint, and spontaneous discussion by moderated web-chat. Managing the technology has also been a steep learning curve – for example, always have a backup presenter in case the person with the slides loses Wi-Fi connection.
On the other hand, each of these events has been better attended than in-person versions. Nationally, the Bidstats website reported 142 notices for public contracts, including virtual market engagement, in 2020. Feedback from our events has been positive, with the majority preferring more targeted, streamlined virtual events that do not require extensive travel.
Regardless of what market engagement post-Covid may look like, there is definitely positive learning from our pandemic commissioning to be embedded into this “new normal”.
- Toni Badnall is senior commissioning officer, children and public health, Bedford Borough Council
Further reading
- UK – Virtual Market Engagement Contracts, Bidstats, December 2020
- COVID-19 communications: Community engagement and local democracy, Local Government Association, November 2020
- Feedback from 1st Virtual Meet The Commissioner Event, Children’s Cross-Regional Arrangements Group, October 2020
- Marketing for Virtual Events: 4 Best Practices, A Darash, Campaign Monitor, June 2020