DCMS Wolfson Seminar

A Successful Bid: the Assessor’s Tale

Derek Law

Director of Information Strategy,

University of Strathclyde

[Text of a presentation made at the DCMS/Wolfson Seminar held at the British Library, February 13^th 1999]

A Scottish University Librarian is not the most obvious person to be commenting on what makes for a succesful bid from English public libraries for funding from the DCMS/Wolfson competition. But that perhaps makes the very first point to remember. Although most of the assessors come from the English public library sector, you should not assume that to be the case. A good bid has to be clear and to spell out all the assumptions it is making. The process is not entirely dissimilar from the one all managers face in selecting staff. You will all be familiar with applications which are handwritten, illegible and which give no sense of what makes the candidate stand out from the herd. For remember that that the process is competitive. Grants are not simply awarded for competence, nor generally are they scaled down. Roughly one in three bids will succeed, which means that a bid has to make explicit why it deserves funding.

And the first rule of making a bid is to read the instructions and follow them. Bids must meet the criteria set down. As well as simply meeting them bids should be informed by the increasing volume of government reports on such activities as the National Grid for Learning and the University for Industry. Bids which demonstrably integrate the library with other related activities in the community, particularly in the areas of education and training are much more likely to succeed. Perhaps the best starting point is then the Themes promoted by DCMS and given in the documentation.

• Promotion of access for the many not the few

• Pursuit of excellence and innovation

• Nurturing of educational opportunity

• Fostering of the creative industries

Bids will not, of course, reflect all of these themes but it is difficult to see how they can succeed if they reflect none of them. In the same way DCMS specifies specific key criteria:

• Evidence of need

• Enhancement of/addition to services or facilities

• 50% partnership funding

• Viable plan + long term sustainability

• Compatible with Building the new Library Network

• Appropriate staff training

• Achievable by 29 February 2000

These are not some form-filling rubric, but the specific criteria against which the assessors will measure and mark bids. Ignore them at your peril.

Key Requirements: The first of these is the use of appropriate technology. This is a little difficult to specify but generally will tend to the high end of the broadband spectrum. However it is understood that no one technology is appropriate in all circumstances. But the programme is funding pathfinder projects and implementing technology and services already prevalent elsewhere hardly fits that requirement. However the panel recognises that there will be circumstances where geography or finance or the provision of a pathfinding service rather than a new technology will make a lower specification appropriate. But this should be explained and justified in the bid rather than assuming that this will be obvious. One word of warning is to understand that no panel will be impressed by the mere installation of Internet connections. Unmediated Internet connections are not a solution to anything and may indeed imply an abdication of professional responsibility. It is facile to confuse sources with resources and fall into the trap of providing the same service as any Internet Service Provider - but more expensively. The panel also looked for evidence of intgration with the local authority network, or at least a vision that such integration was desirable. In cases where local logistical, political or financial reasons this was impossible were accepted, but again because the logic of this decision was clearly spelled out. On one last technical point no one last year explored the desirability of caching strategies. This is now widely understood as a cost-saving tool and I would expect some of the better bids this year to explore that issue. In short then, what last year’s panel sought was leading edge thinking rather than leading edge technology.

An important concept is also that of sustainability. There should be a clear statement of how the service or technology will be supported and if appropriate some risk analysis as well as a clear vision of the future. The panel was willing to take some calculated risks on sustainability in the last round, but only in those cases where the bid was quite explicit on what the risks were. Be sure that the panel will spot crossed fingers. They were all experts at writing dodgy bids themselves and can spot a problem a mile off. Problems are not problems if honestly admitted and addressed and such frankness is rather welcomed - within reason! Here again some understanding of the aspirations of the authority was usually illuminating.

Conversely the panel held strongly to that nice piece of Eurospeak, subsidiarity. There were a number of cases where bids simply sought to make good underresourcing by the local authority. Seeking funds to buy staff pc’s or to put a circulation system into those branches where the authority had failed to fund this at the time of procurement were frowned on, unless there was a demonstrable value added from the extension of the system. Generally speaking however, it would take significant ingenuity to show that the simple extension of a library housekeeping system was a pathfinding project.

Integration with other elements of the authority was a definitely positive factor in bids. Bids which showed that the library was integrated into a vision which offered a range of services to the citizen and/or were integrated into some view of the delivery of various levels of education locally or were one element of a larger plan were viewed very positively. Assessors will want to consider a range of questions. What local networks exist? What local networks are planned? What other public sector partner networks can be used? What is the proposed relationship with the National Grid for Learning. Another element of integration must surely relate to content in this next round of bids. All of the major agencies involved in digital library developments have now recognised that a large base of locally developed content is a necessary attribute of the digital library. Good bids will share a vision of what content they will look to provide, possibly in relation to the £50 million made available for content creation. What matters is not the success of these content bids, which will come after the Wolfson round, but the nature of the plans and aspirations. Simple reliance on commercial providers and on the anarchic provision of the Internet where a URL has an average life span of 75 days will not impress. Show that you understand what the Internet is - and is not.

Partnerships were also looked at positively although there are a number of caveats to be entered here. Partnerships fall into different sorts. Relationships with a number of public agencies will be looked for, such as:

• Regional Development Agencies

• Metropolitan Area Networks

• National Grid for Learning

• University for Industry

• Learning and Training Agencies

Not all of these or perhaps will be relevant to every bid. But again an explanation of why such partnerships have not been prosecuted may be worth making.

Commercial partnerships also fall into many types. There are perhaps three types. Firstly the straightfoward gift of money or resources as an act of public good. Secondly a partnership with a company who will deliver a non-library part of the proposal such as training. Thirdly the sale at ostensibly discounted prices of proprietary goods or services. This is sometimes disguised as a result of “free” consultancy.. But remember that you get what you ask for not what you need. There is really no alternative to having staff (perhaps borrowed from the authorities computer department) who can engage in dialogue with the consultant who might better be considered a glorified salesman, because all too often you get what they sell not what you really need. There is a real need to have unbiassed judicious advice which puts you in the position of knowing more about the technology than your potential partners do. If they don’t respect you they may take advantage of you.

Finally and practically on requirements a statement of the stunningly obvious is that bids should be clear and legible. We are all all to familiar with job applications which are written in more or less indecipherable handwriting, which ramble and which suggest that the author can neither write, spell nor understand the advertisement. The same logic applies to this kind of competitive bidding process. Inevitably a bid which is lucid, legible, numerate, which is easy for the reviewer to understand and which creates albeit subliminally a favourable impression of competence are bound to do well. A bid which forces the assessor to shuffle back and forward through pages and not understand how sums are calculated inevitably creates an irritation factor which will colour judgements. Remember that the bids are competitive and that only about one in three will succeed. You must do everything in terms of presentation which makes it easy for the assessor to be supportive.

And so to conclude there is good news and bad news. The good news is that there is no simple formula that guarantees success. Every bid is considered on its merits and in its context. Good bids from small, struggling library services will do better than bad but bold bids from big rich authorities. The bad news is that there is no simple formula that guarantees success. Every bid will be considered on its merits and in its context. It’s up to you to make it clear that you have a vision, that the funding will help to achieve that, and that you are worth supporting. Only you can sell the bid.