Accelerating digital delivery: Why building a common culture is key to success
In our Accelerating Digital Delivery series, we explore how a common culture—shared values, beliefs, and practices—drives rapid and impactful transformation. This was key in our work with the Cabinet Office to create the ‘Find a Grant’ service, revolutionising access to government funding.
If you missed the first part of the series, where we introduced the importance of digital delivery in government transformation, you can read it here.
This blog highlights how aligning teams around shared goals accelerated delivery, ensured accessibility, and delivered a user-focused solution that drives meaningful impact.
A common culture refers to a shared set of values, beliefs and practices that unite teams, creating a cohesive working environment where everyone is aligned toward common goals. This foundation not only enhances collaboration but also drives innovation and productivity.
Our work with the Cabinet Office, building their ‘Find a Grant’ service to make applying and searching for government funding more accessible, illustrates how vital it is to have a strong common culture in order to achieve successful business outcomes.
As a national service, conducting user research to help develop the ‘Find a Grant’ project was critical. Used by different types of entities and individuals, the service needed to be accessible and easy to use, embracing a core TCO value of being accessible for all.
With over 60 interviews with users conducted during an 8-week Discovery period, a comprehensive report was produced, recommending areas to prototype and test. Working in a blended team onsite and offsite with the Cabinet Office, AND Digital brought together a wide range of skill sets and experience, and worked to define a shared vision that would keep teams aligned on the project objectives.
As the work progressed into front-end delivery, designed to exceed GDS accessibility standards, collaboration was maintained by constant communication across workstreams, keeping accountability and transparency across teams. Having a shared understanding of the context fostered a no-blame culture, and the clarity of purpose unified diverse perspectives and streamlined efforts across the team.
With an emphasis on open communication, a high-performing team naturally emerged that created and encouraged collaboration, and leveraged individuals’ strengths and expertise. With teams working across interoperability, user research and data together, problems could be surfaced and solved far quicker, and any bottlenecks dealt with immediately.
After the successful build of the ‘Find a Grant’ service, the Cabinet Office appointed AND Digital for a further year to help them achieve their remaining goals, which included achieving interoperability between their different systems, and further improving the service for applicants and admins.
Since the launch of the service, ‘Find a Grant’ has created a single place where people can understand the opportunities available that have applications for grant funding. Achieving 30,000 more users than the desired target, and with over £9.4 billion worth of funding available for those to apply for through grants, the success of the project cannot be overstated.
Fostering a common culture among the blended Cabinet Office and AND Digital teams increased engagement and motivation, and ultimately created a partnership that was one of openness, fun, honesty and collaboration, while always keeping focus on the needs of the user, ensuring the right recommendations were being made for the service.
