Initiative proposals

The development of initiative proposals helps an agency understand the level of investment required and strategic options available (including collaboration, leverage and re-use opportunities).

An integrated digital or ICT planning approach typically culminates in the development of proposals that take the outputs from the vision, strategy and roadmap activities and establish which specific initiatives should be invested in to achieve the digital or ICT vision, strategies and objectives.

Some agencies may have adopted their own investment lifecycle and investment logic methodologies and initiative proposals should be considered within the context of those methodologies.

Audience

A practitioner in the context of this guideline can include one or more of the following roles:

• Digital or ICT strategic planners
• Agency and service strategic planners
• Investment or portfolio specialists
• Benefits specialists
• Enterprise architects.

The relationship between the disciplines of digital and ICT planning, enterprise architecture and portfolio management within the context of digital or ICT planning activities is highlighted in the diagram below.

Figure 1: Integration of digital and ICT planning, enterprise architecture and portfolio management functions

Proposals that are evidence based, and highlight the need for change, level of investment, strategic alignment, strategic approaches and available resources justify initiatives and help agencies compete for the government’s limited financial resources.

Gather information

The development of initiative proposals requires input from the five specialists outlined in the Purpose and audience section of this guideline. Working across the disciplines of planning, enterprise architecture and portfolio management will strengthen the position of digital or ICT investment against the other investments proposed by the agency.

Outputs from the development of roadmaps and the gap analysis will form the basis for developing initiative proposals. An initiative proposal may take into consideration a single element or group of elements represented on a roadmap.

Using workshops

In some cases, it may be appropriate to conduct a workshop with internal and external stakeholders, subject matter experts and service partners to develop the material necessary for an initiative proposal.

The workshop can be used to shape the problem statement, define or refine the benefits confirm the business changes and identify the strategic options.

Proposal format

The format of the initiative proposal will depend on the planning objectives, agency specific processes and whole-of-government processes relating to digital and ICT investment. Practitioners need to consider aligning the format of initiative proposals to the templates required by the funding process in which they are participating.

Examples of types of initiative proposals include but are not limited to:

• Strategic Business Case – Building Queensland
• Program Brief – Managing Successful Programs
• Outline Business Case – PRINCE2.

Visit Digital and ICT best practice methodologies for additional support and resources.

Proposal elements

Regardless of the template used for an initiative proposal, there are many elements that should be considered as part of an initiative proposal. These include but are not limited to:

• the service need or opportunity, including its context, background and the nature of the issue
• how the potential initiative aligns to the agency’s vision and the strategic priorities of the Queensland Government
• linkages to other initiatives or activities
• a problem statement including the relative importance of the problem or opportunity
• proposed business benefits including an investment logic map or similar if appropriate
• stakeholders impacted by the change
• strategic approaches including non-asset related approaches as well as opportunities for enhancement to the current environment
• re-use, leverage and collaboration opportunities
• estimated costs
• risks
• recommendations.

The introduction or background should set the context for the investment concept and summarise the current state in terms of services and stakeholders affected as well as any current performance issues, risks or drivers. This also may include statements regarding changing business models or emerging technologies as well as their potential impact on the agency.

This section will use information gathered during the Vision guideline activities such as the drivers, PESTEL analysis or SWOT analysis and benefits as well as the contextual information such as the narrative contained in strategic planning documents regarding the current state and the service vision.

This section clearly of your proposal should clearly articulate the problem to be addressed.Problems can also be considered opportunities for change and capability improvement.

This section draws on information gathered during the Vision guideline activities such as the drivers, PESTEL analysis or SWOT analysis.

Develop a problem statement

Practitioners can use the following guidelines from Building Queensland’s Strategic Business Case Development Framework .Typically, there may be two or three main problem statements.

A problem statement should be:

• expressed in plain English and include a clearly defined cause and effect within the statement
• supported by evidence to verify both the problem and the cause and effect
• compelling and something the organisation and/or community care about (e.g. if the effect or consequence are of little importance or concern, the problem is not compelling).

Key questions to consider when developing a problem statement include:

• What are the likely causes and impacts?
• What will happen if we do nothing?
• What trigger has made us think we need to respond now?
• What are the impacts and can we minimise the cause?
• What evidence is there to support the relationship between the cause and the impact?

Helpful hints when developing a problem statement include:

• focus on the core problem rather than the symptoms of the problem
• if the investment is driven by a political imperative (e.g. an election promise or a Ministerial request), identify the community need(s) that stimulated the political response.
• take a strategic view rather than a tactical view, which is often asset or solution focused and avoid problem statements that might indicate a specific asset solution
• frame the problem statement around the impacts the problem is having on people rather than the adequacy of specific assets.

Strategic alignment

This section should clearly demonstrate the alignment to both the strategic business direction and the digital or ICT strategic direction of the agency.

It is not sufficient to simply state the name of relevant strategies and plans. Practitioners need to identify the specific objectives the proposed initiative is likely to directly contribute to and

how it will contribute to the achievement of those objectives.

Benefits

The benefits outlined in the digital or ICT strategy or plan can be used as the basis to start refining benefits of the proposed initiative. It may be appropriate to include an investment logic map or benefits dependency network from the vision planning activities and modify it to suit the specific circumstances of the proposed initiative.

Refer to the Benefits, business changes and enablers guideline for more information.

Stakeholders

The section should outline the stakeholders or groups of stakeholders who will benefit from the business change and related investment. These stakeholders can include citizens, customers, service delivery partners, other government agencies, organisational units and staff for example

Strategic options and approaches may include a range of high-level interventions that describe a response, resolve the problem, or take advantage of an opportunity. All strategic options must have the potential to deliver some or all the required business changes and address the related problem. To ensure an option is strategic there must be more than one possible solution.

Strategic options should include non-asset related options including service and process efficiencies, changing the flow of the demand for services or providing a solution using an ‘as-a-service’ model of delivery. Options to use or expand the use of current assets of services used by the agency should also be considered. Strategic options should also include a ‘do nothing’ option.

The identification and analysis of strategic options uses the business changes information from a benefits dependency network or investment logic map and identifies and evaluates options for delivering the required changes.

The information collected from the following guideline planning activities may help practitioners analyse potential options and approaches:

• Current state
• Horizon scan
• Digital and technology trends
• See Benefits, business changes and enablers for details on dependency networks and investment logic maps.

In some cases, it may be necessary to conduct a workshop or interviews to identify the strategic options with internal and external stakeholders and subject matter experts.

Each option should be evaluated. The methods used to evaluate options will depend on the agency’s own investment lifecycle methodology or framework.

This guideline will cover two evaluation methods:

• Weighted options
• Public Value Scorecard

Practitioners should consider using workshops with stakeholders to evaluate strategic options. This will provide the opportunity to discuss and record the opinions or justification by key stakeholders as to which options are preferred or better.

Weighted options

This method involves identifying criteria against which options will be evaluated and selected. These criteria could be based on the business changes required, specific investment objectives, or the benefit statement. Selection criteria should address elements of attractiveness, achievability and affordability.

A percentage is then assigned to the criteria for each option based on the contribution each option will make to achieving or satisfying that selection criteria. See the table below for an example of a completed analysis.

Sample weighted options analysis

When using any method of weighting or ranking, practitioners must supply the evidence or justification for rating an option. This should include data based on research and, in some cases, may include the reasoning, opinions or themes identified during stakeholder engagement.

Information to substantiate the weighting may include but is not limited to:

• current actual or projected service delivery costs
• whole of life cost estimates based on a conceptual design, similar projects conducted in the past, cost benchmarks or similar project costs in other agencies or other jurisdictions
• evidence of whole-of-life costs, unit costs or improved performance based on industry models and patterns.
• evidence of improved performance identified through research.
• market research into product or service offerings.

The extent to which a solution is expected to be offset by revenue should also be considered. Any costs are indicative only as not all of the strategic options may have been identified. The analysis of the options may need to be revised following further investigation of the whole-of-life-costs.

Public value scorecard

This method is more subjective and involves overlaying the results of conversations with diverse groups of stakeholders on a graph regarding the merits of each option. Though this method is subjective, it does take into consideration the opinions of different stakeholder groups when broad consultation is undertaken.

There are 5 criteria used in the scorecard:

1. Is it useful?
2. Is it decent?
3. Is it politically acceptable?
4. Is it a positive experience?
5. Is it profitable?

An example scorecard diagram is provided below.

Public value scorecard example

Best and worst case scenarios should both be included. A separate graph should be produced for each option so the relative merits of each can be compared according to different stakeholder groups.

As with weighted options analysis, it is important to supply the evidence or justification for selecting an option. This is likely to include the reasoning, opinions or themes identified during stakeholder engagement.

As part of proposing an investment it may be necessary provide indicative cost estimates for all options. Agencies may have their own methodologies for developing cost estimates and these guidelines should be considered within the context of those methods and techniques.

At the initiative proposal stage, costs are indicative only and will be refined as the investment lifecycle progresses and formal business cases are developed.

Whichever method of cost estimating is used, details of how costs were derived should be included in the initiative proposal as footnotes or as an attachment or appendix of the proposal. This should include any assumptions made so decision makers are aware of any limitations regarding decision making based on cost. It may also be necessary to include a level of contingency into each cost estimate.

There are several sources of information that may assist with developing cost estimates. These sources include but are not limited to:

• portfolio dashboards
• information relating to actual costs from past projects
• domain costs collected as part of the whole-of-Government ICT profiling activities
• industry research
• details of actual or proposed costs of initiatives conducted in other agencies or other jurisdictions.
• known costs of services derived from the service catalogue.
• vendor or supplier marketing information that is publicly available.

The costs of previous programs and projects, particularly where the approach and capability being delivered is similar, can be used as a predictor of future costs. If another agency or business unit within the Queensland Government or other jurisdiction may have or is about to undertake. a similar initiative, practitioners could engage external partners who are willing to provide indicative cost information based on their experience.

A more subjective approach is to use historical costs and develop typical cost ranges for initiatives that are considered small, medium or large or alternatively low complexity, medium complexity and high complexity. The options identified in the initiative proposal can then be classified according to size or complexity and the indicative cost ranges assigned to them.

Costs per domain using data from agency or whole-of-government ICT profiling activities can also be used to derive cost estimates. A conceptual or target state architecture, specific to the initiative can be developed. Domain costs for estimated capital or implementation cost as well as an annual cost of operation can then be used to estimate the cost of an approach or solution.

When using this method, it is important to omit the statistical outliers from the data so the average cost per domain information is more accurate. It is also important to include non-solution related costs such as program and project management costs, business or organisation change costs including service and information improvement, organisational unit changes, workforce development and training, marketing and communication costs.

Practitioners should investigate Digital projects dashboard and ICT Profiling data information for your agency and other agencies and determine how this information can assist with providing indicative costs.

This section should document the risks that are specific to the proposed initiative.

Most agencies will have an existing risk management framework or methodology and these guidelines should be considered within the context of that methodology or framework.

Refer to ICT Risk management for more information.

The identification and evaluation or risks can be conducted as part of a workshop. Risk analysis conducted as part of the digital and ICT strategic planning activities may form the basis for the identification of risks related to this initiative.

When identifying risks, you should first consider categories of risk. These may include, but are not limited to:

• service delivery risks
• legal and compliance risks
• reputational risks
• risks to business continuity
• financial risks
• workforce and organisational risks.

See the Risks and challenges guideline for more details on categorising risk.

Once risks have been identified, the consequences and likelihood of the risk occurring should also be identified. A risk rating (typically extreme, high, medium or low) can then be derived based on the consequences and likelihood scores, applying the risk assessment matrix adopted by the agency. In many cases, only risks that are extreme or high are discussed in the initiative proposal.

Risk management

It may be necessary to identify and outline risk management strategies as part of the initiative proposal. This includes discussing how each risk management option contributes to resolving or mitigating those risks.

Recommendations

Based on the analysis of approaches, costs, benefits and risks, a recommended option can be identified. The recommendation should include the rationale for selecting that option based on the evidence gathered through the analysis of options. The recommendation should also identify the intended sponsor of the initiative. It may also be necessary to identify or recommend an intended source of funds.

Depending on the agency’s investment governance and assurance processes, the recommendation may be to simply progress to the next investment gate. This may include developing a business case or conducting an implementation planning study for example. While the full estimated cost would be included in the proposal. Only enough funding and resources to proceed to the next stage would be requested as part of the recommendation.

The initiative proposal should be approved by the proposed sponsor or Senior Responsible Officer.

Once approved the initiative proposal will be submitted for prioritisation and approval in accordance with the agency’s and whole-of-government investment governance processes.

At this stage, you should refer to the final guideline, Portfolio management to complete the Digital and ICT strategic planning framework.