This toolkit will help service directors and others within local authorities and partner organisations to implement innovative solutions to meet key local challenges, needs and targets. It supports the creation, assessment and development of creative ideas, their refinement to more detailed solutions and finally the construction of robust business cases for actions that are genuine alternatives or enhancements to current practice.

It helps to overcome many barriers, none greater than operational pressures that restrict the time, space and resource that can be dedicated to bringing together different disciplines and potential partners in the front line, by providing a way to think afresh about challenges in an informal yet structured and practical manner. The process can be completed in a matter of months.

Councils and local public service delivery organisations are under constant pressure to deliver ‘better for less’, to improve performance, to reach out to citizens who are disadvantaged, and to support socially excluded communities. Incremental change is unlikely to be sufficient to respond to this pressure for ever; more radical change will be needed to make significant improvements to the lives and life chances of the most disadvantaged. Local organisations will need to be innovative if they want to improve performance, value for money and the quality and reach of their services.

This Innovation Process and Resource Toolkit is grounded in the principles of inclusion: that focusing on those local people and communities in most need not only has the potential for improving their outcomes, but also has the potential of delivering the greatest efficiency gains in services for those who are typically the most expensive to support. Innovative approaches to service delivery to excluded groups can also benefit everyone.

The process has been designed to bring together different perspectives, particularly those of social and technological practitioners, in order to develop new solutions to local problems and needs. It has been designed, tried and tested in partnership with a number of local authorities, agencies and consultancies with an expertise in social innovation. It was developed from practical experience between 2006 and 2010 by the Delivery Innovation Team based at the City of London Corporation, and the material authored by Ewen McKinnon, Louise Bazalgette, Johanna Davies, Jane Robbins, Beatrice Rogers, and Paul Waller.

The Toolkit

 

The key components of the toolkit are:

1. A short process guide outlining each phase of the innovation process and linking to fuller guides on each phase:
2. A Process Map detailing some key steps in the local service innovation process:


3. A resource toolkit which provides guides, tools and worked examples for implementing the local service innovation process:

 

Guides	Innovation briefing Short process guide Phase 1 guide	Phase 2 guide	Phase 3 guide	Phase 4 guide	Phase 5 guide IDeA guidance HMT guidance Social ROI guide	Phase 6 guide
Tools	Process presentation Contract specification Facilitators list Mapping tool Beacon tool solutions4inclusion Next generation broadband	Attendee spreadsheet Planning spreadsheet Decision spreadsheet Research repository	Group exercise Brainstorming prompt Solution definition prompt Event materials checklist Event feedback form	Project definition tool HMT proposition template Prince2 project approach template solutions4inclusion Channels tool	Social inclusion BC tool ITI BC tool mietool Stakeholder benefits tool Prince2 BC template HMT BC checklist	Prince2 PID template Project transition tool
Examples	Contract specifications Case studies: N Lincolnshire Kent Reading Leicester Video cases: eMentoring eClinics eChampion Virtual home	Invitations and markers Event pre-work Event agendas Decision criteria	Event support documents Post event reports	Solution and idea filtering Project definitions User testing	Business cases	Milestone presentations Project initiation document Example Evaluations: Mobile ESOL

 

     4. Detailed guides to each phase of the innovation process:

• Phase 1
• Phase 2
• Phase 3
• Phase 4
• Phase 5
• Phase 6

See the Terms and Conditions of Use and then get started at the short process guide.
 
IMPORTANT NOTICE TO END-USER, READ BEFORE INSTALLING OR USING THE MATERIALS.