DD2747 Procurement of an off-the-shelf’ grants management system for the GLA Group

1.1.    The GLA Group is one of the largest grant-making organisations in London. Grants are used across the group to help deliver third-party projects that align with policy outcomes set out in Mayoral strategies and commitments.  

1.2.    The Grants and Loans Transformation programme seeks to make the GLA Group’s grant-making activities more efficient and effective, and to offer better value for money. It ensures that grant-making: is used strategically and effectively; and makes the most of the skills, knowledge and capabilities available across the group. The vision for this service is to ensure that GLA grant-making “significantly and demonstrably improves the lives of Londoners, and makes London a better place, now and in the future”.  

1.3.    With this in mind, we intend to launch one pilot programme (the Mayor’s Green Roots programme) via a new commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solution.  Given the priority to launch this fund in June 2025, it is imperative that we progress at pace with this implementation.  

1.4.    The GLA undertook an early market engagement (EME) with a pool of suppliers to assess the current COTS options in the market. Suppliers were advised it was not a tendering exercise. The EME consisted of the following activity:

•    Desk research of the COTS grants management system market, which enabled us to identify six products that potentially met our requirements
•    Formation of a panel of subject matter experts to agree detailed functional and non-functional requirements (and later, evaluate candidate products): this included representatives from the Green Roots team
•    Invitations to six potential suppliers to submit details of their COTS products functionality and estimated costs for licences and configuring the Green Roots fund on our behalf in the light of timeframes
•    Four supplier COTS products showed potential and demonstrations of these products were requested. 
•    Selection of four respondents, based on their proposals, to demo their products to our panel (two were excluded for not meeting some of our 'must-have' requirements)
•    90 minute demos to our evaluation panel by four suppliers
•    Scoring Assessment of each supplier by the panel against our agreed evaluation essential criteria
•    Further questions to suppliers (post the demos) ruled out two of the four suppliers as potential options
•    Suppliers were also asked as to their framework affiliations eg CCS or other. This was to ascertain possible compliant routes to market (RTM) when undertaking a tendering exercise
•    Gcloud14 was highlighted as the most advantageous RTM for a tendering exercise, as the prices are fixed and the service definition documentation detailed all the requirements of the COTS products

1.5.    Route to market for tendering of the COTS products:

•    Following the EME, and with discussion with TfL commercial, a decision has been made to tender for the COTS product via GCLOUD14 using key word search.
•    GCloud14 is a CCS government framework which has a predefined tendering process using “key word search” to shortlist suppliers
•    Shortlisted suppliers are then assessed based on the service definition documentation and their pricing documentation advertised on GCloud14
•    Award is then made based on the supplier’s ability to provide the required criteria, and their pricing
•    If the chosen supplier is an implementation partner of a licenced software product, then following discussion with TfL commercial, the licences alone will be procured separately through the TfL Reseller framework. This will allow significant discounts on licence costs compared with procuring them through the implementation partner on GCloud14.
 

2.1.    Procuring a COTS grant-management solution will achieve the following immediate outcome: an easily deployable technical solution to meet the requirements for the Mayor’s Green Roots programme, due to launch in the first quarter of 2025.

2.2.    Further work will be undertaken to agree future programme onboarding. Over the longer term the aims are to improve the efficiency of the grant progress, standardise processes and data, improve the grantee experience, provide audit trail and improve reporting insights on the achievement of grant outcomes. 

2.3.    The implementation of this solution will provide a more cost-effective solution to grant administration. In the past, civil society type grant programmes such as the Green Roots programme would have been outsourced to an external grant management service via the Small Grants Management System Framework. On average, this has been at a cost of 10 per cent of the overall available grant funding. As a rough estimate, of the £48.5m administered via external grant management services between financial years 2018-19 and 2024-25, £4.855m (10 per cent) of this would have been specifically for administrative services, including system administration and support. 

2.4.    In contrast, this proposal represents only 2.5 per cent of the available grant funding (£10m) in the Green Roots Fund, representing higher value for money than the previous approach via the Small Grants Management System Framework. 

2.5.    The implementation plan for the COTS includes integration to financial systems and contract management systems. Whilst this will initially be utilised by the Green Roots Fund, these components will be ready to use as and when we scale the use of this system across more grant programmes. The return on investment in the longer term will therefore be significantly higher. Should we choose to take this approach, due governance will be followed.
 

3.1.    Procurement of this solution will enable the GLA to comply with the requirements of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the technical standards developed by the World Wide Web Consortium to make digital content accessible to people with disabilities: WCAG compliance was a ‘Must have’ non-functional requirement met by all suppliers invited to demo their products.  

3.2.    Procurement of this solution will allow us to deliver the Green Roots programme in accordance with the GDS Service Standard, one of the principles of which is to ensure that everyone can use the service.
 

4.1.    Key risks and issues

Links to Mayoral strategies and priorities

4.2.    This proposal links to the Green Roots programme which will deliver against the London Environment Strategy, and which sets out an ambitious vision including creating new green spaces where they are needed most, as part of the Mayor’s ambition to make London a net-zero carbon city by 2030.

Conflicts of interest

4.3.    No person involved in the drafting or clearance of this Mayoral Decision has any conflict of interest.

5.1.    Approval is sought for £250,000 over 3 years, profiled as £150,000 in 2025-26, £50,000 in 26-27 and £50,000 in 27-28 due to be funded from the transformation budget within the Open Project System. Funding in future years will be subject to the annual budget setting process. It is worth pointing out that should these projections increase marginally, this request will need to be approved through a Mayoral Decision (MD) process.

5.2.    According to the Grants team’s estimates, the ‘do nothing’ option is likely to cost 10 per cent of the overall grant funding amounting to £1m over 3 years for the Green Roots programme against the equivalent £250,000 quoted for the COTS grant management solution, representing value for money in the administration of this programme. 

5.3.    The expenditure will support the Mayor’s mandate of ‘Delivering a greener, more climate-resilient London’.
 

6.1.    The foregoing sections of this report indicate that the decisions requested of the Director concern the exercise of the Authority’s general powers; falling within the Authority’s statutory powers to do such things considered to further, or that are facilitative of, or conducive or incidental to, the promotion of economic development and wealth creation and social development in Greater London; and in formulating the proposals in respect of which a decision is sought officers have complied with the Authority’s related statutory duties to:

•    pay due regard to the principle that there should be equality of opportunity for all people 
•    consider how the proposals will promote the improvement of health of persons, health inequalities between persons and to contribute towards the achievement of sustainable development in the United Kingdom 
•    consult with appropriate bodies. In taking the decisions requested,

6.2    The Director must have due regard to the Public Sector Equality Duty; namely the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct prohibited by the Equality Act 2010, and to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic (age; disability; gender reassignment; marriage and civil partnership; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; sexual orientation) and persons who do not share it (section 149 of the Equality Act 2010). To this end, the Director should have particular regard to section 3 (above) of this report. 

6.3    If the Director makes the decisions sought, officers must ensure that the supplies and services in question are procured fully in accordance with GCloud14 and TfL’s internal Reseller Framework (working with TfL Procurement in this regard) and the appropriate call-off contracts are put in place between and executed by the GLA and the contractors before commencement of such supplies and services.