"For the first time, we have an up to date view of what is happening in our area"
The Crime and Drugs Team at Government Office for the Welsh Assembly need to co-ordinate crime reductions projects across 40 partnerships. This includes 22 CDRPs, and 18 BCUs (Basic Command Units). The CDRPs are normally administered by local authorities, whilst the BCUs are Police based.
The geography of Wales means it is difficult to support and co-ordinate activity, partnerships are widely spread.
The assembly wanted to introduce a consistent management approach that would reduce the administration overhead and the paperwork.
www.TheFundingProject.com was the ideal solution in this case. The online nature of the system removes the geographic barriers to monitoring and data sharing, and the SARA based process introduces consistency and structure.
The system is in the first year of use with the Assembly and users from all over Wales are logging on to register projects and declare funding allocations.
As with any system, paper based or otherwise, the hard part is to get the key people to use it consistently. They key people for www.theFundingProject.com are the partnership managers. They are the people who must enter the data about the projects they are working on, and encourage their project managers to enter the regular feedback. To get these key users on-board, we organised with the Welsh Assembly and initial 3 month period of intensive training, followed by occasional follow up training, by phone or via visits, for users who were missed ion the first round or who needed additional help.
There are now about 240 registered users across the 40 partnerships. The system is configured so that all of the users can see details of the projects being run in all of the partnerships, helping with the sharing of ideas and good practice – ideal in an area where partnerships don’t often have the opportunity to meet up with colleagues from other areas. The system is monitoring 250 projects representing and tracking about £2 million in funding.