Communities and Local Government

Customer-led Transformation Fund

CLG have launched a fund calling for proposals on how social media can support our
work with customers to help us change the way that services are delivered to make
them more effective, responsive and efficient. Customers can include users, citizens
or businesses.

How do CLG think social media can support our work with customers?

o Build skills and capacity: mentoring, self help, learning and leadership
o Sharing existing good practice
o Creating new models

What do we need to demonstrate?

o How it can help achieve one or more of our LAA priorities

o Better to focus on outcomes (improving a particular customer groups’
lives) than outputs (a new service or product)
o Has to focus on a customer group, can’t have general outcomes
o How we can involve other LAA partners working on the chosen LAA priority/ies
o How the project can promote efficiencies

o How the project can help change the relationship between us and our customers

o Providing less daunting routes into daunting organisations

o Enabling people to support each other – neighbours, families or carers
 How people can share their resources (time, space & skills)
together
 How people are supporting each other through their social
networks and can we use that customer insight to redesign our
services
 How technologies disrupt the way people behave and what we
should do about it

What shouldn’t we do?

o Don’t bid for social media to build a new product or as a stand alone approach
o Don’t use language you understand, use language that funders are likely to
understand – in similar way that you would write for a senior management
meeting or a scrutiny committee

What the process?

o Funding over two years ending March 2011

o Phased approach – no single deadline, regular review of new proposals
o Support for councils to develop relevant proposals
o Need to learn from projects funded in previous phases of funding