Discovery phase

Duration: 8-weeks (January - March 2019)

The team began the project with a discovery phase, aligned with the GDS Service Standard, to explore the problem space and identify the needs of planning officers and planning managers.

Activities across the discovery phase included:

User research — carrying out contextual face-to-face interviews, shadowing planning officers using existing back-office systems, user journey mapping, user story formation and defining emerging design principles

Technical exploration — tracking data through the current planning application systems and processes, and investigating emerging data standards across other related systems and projects

Business case definition — exploring cost per application type across different councils and identifying opportunities based on time spent per application per team

Concept creation — facilitating co-design workshops with planning officers, creating a series of concept prototypes based on emerging user research, and testing concepts across London and non-London council teams to gather feedback

As part of user research, the team carried out:

17 x user interviews with planning teams
2 x existing system demonstrations
3 x insight and co-design workshops
4 x planning application process shadowing sessions
12 x back-office concept prototype testing sessions

The team engaged with:

7 x London borough councils (Southwark, Hackney, Redbridge, Tower Hamlets, Haringey, Lambeth and Islington)
1 x Metropolitan district council (Leeds)
2 x other councils (Canterbury and Huntingdonshire)

To conclude the discovery phase, the team identified and validated two propositions:

A data-informed workflow
A collaborative 3D workflow

See the full discovery report here.

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Discovery phase

A user-centred Back-office Planning System (BoPS) for local authorities

BoPS is a collaborative local authority project, funded by the MHCLG Local Digital Fund and led by Southwark Council & Partners.