Department for Children, Schools and Families – Requirements Management
Situation
ContactPoint is part of the wide reforms within children’s services which are intended to put children at the centre,and ensure that where needs are identified they can be acted upon in a prompt, professional and joined-up manner. ContactPoint is one of a range of tools that will help services work together more effectively on the frontline to meet the needs of children, young people and their families. This basic online directory will allow an authorised practitioner to see who else is working with the same child.
ContactPoint will hold the following information:
- Basic identifying information for all children in England (aged up to 18): name, address, gender, date of birth and a unique identifying number.
- Basic identifying information about the child's parent or carer.
- Contact details for services involved with the child: as a minimum, educational setting and GP practice, but also other services where appropriate.
- A means to indicate whether a practitioner is a lead professional and if they have undertaken an assessment under the Common Assessment Framework.
ContactPoint will be made available to all 150 local authorities in England during 2008.
Access will be restricted to authorised users who need it as part of their work. This will include those working in education, health, social care, youth offending and some voluntary organisations. All users will have to go through appropriate security checks, including enhanced Criminal Records Bureau checks.
Robust procedures and mechanisms will be in place to guard against access by unauthorised users, and the inappropriate use of ContactPoint by authorised users.
The design and implementation of ContactPoint has been informed through the work of nine ‘Trailblazer’ pilot areas. They demonstrated that this type of tool does provide effective support to practitioners and managers and contribute to improved outcomes.
Drawing substantially on the lessons and experience of the Trailblazers, the concept for ContactPoint was developed further through extensive consultations with a wide range of stakeholders. This process informed the initial design stage, the development of the business requirements and endorsed the outline design solution.
One of the key requirements identified was that a national approach is essential as many children access services in different local authority areas or move between areas. Partitioning the data will enable local authorities to take the lead in maintaining the accuracy of the records for children living in their area. This solution also offers the greatest technical and operational simplicity, and represents best value for money.
One-off implementation costs will total £224m over three years. This includes the cost of ensuring the original data supplied to ContactPoint is accurate, that there are robust systems in place to ensure security, and that staff are trained to use ContactPoint properly. Operating costs will be £41m per year - most of this will pay for the additional staff needed to ensure the ongoing security, accuracy and auditing of ContactPoint. Both set-up and operating costs are to be funded by Central Government.
Solution
Charteris provided requirements management services to the ContactPoint Design Team, drawing on their extensive experience of system design to shape a solution which will help deliver the anticipated business benefits.
Requirements Definition and Validation
Charteris are responsible for defining the detailed requirements for this very large Central Government project. Requirements are not only critical to the development of ContactPoint but also provide agreement between the Department and its stakeholders on what is to be delivered within the project. The comprehensive level of detail documented within the specification was significantly in advance of that previously experienced by the Department and contributed hugely to understanding of ContactPoint among stakeholders.
Requirements were captured in phases with stakeholders which allowed the requirements definition process to be time-boxed, and to be managed in a sensible and logical sequence. Initially, business requirements were agreed with the Department’s management team and validated with stakeholders to gain general acceptance on the project’s aims and objectives. User requirements were then agreed with stakeholders through a series of workshops using practitioner-derived ‘real-world’ business scenarios to help extract these requirements.
Finally, system requirements designed to help deliver the user requirements were agreed with the project’s design team, and with Capgemini, who were responsible for completing the technical design phase, ensuring that the system helped to deliver the anticipated business benefits.
Requirements Management
Once requirements have been agreed, they must be managed effectively. Charteris’ extensive experience in this area allowed effective requirements management, issue management and change control processes and procedures to be defined and agreed with the internal team, Capgemini, and external stakeholders. In addition, Charteris provided advice to the Department on tools to support the requirements management process. Selection of an appropriate tool benefited the project in two areas. Firstly, the project requirements were made accessible to all as a central resource, fully traceable to source documentation with all changes fully auditable. Secondly, the agreed management processes and procedures introduced an enhanced level of rigour to the project in the areas of scope control, risk and issue management, and planning.
Skills transfer
The Department’s staff, including all levels of the management team, were involved in developing the specification of requirements at every stage to ensure consistency with policy, and agreement of the emerging design. The Department was also made aware of the benefits of requirements management tools to both managing requirements on a lengthy, complex project, and also in delivering effective project control processes and procedures.
Business Benefit
The business benefits for the Department of Charteris’ involvement were immediate and far-reaching. A consistent set of requirements has been agreed upon by all stakeholders, including practitioners from a very wide variety of professional disciplines. Change control processes and procedures helped to ensure that scope was managed through the duration of the design phase of the project, ensuring that the anticipated business benefits would be delivered in a timely and cost-effective manner.