Challenge 7.9: How can technology enable organisations and volunteers to organise while expanding and evidencing the positive impact of their work across Scotland?

Key information for applicants

Please note: you must apply for this Challenge via Public Contracts Scotland

Launch date
Tuesday 31 May 2022

Questions may be submitted until
16:00, Tuesday 21 June 2022

Closing date
Midday, Tuesday 28 June 2022

Exploration Stage interviews
Thursday 28 July 2022

Exploration Stage
15 August to 2 September 2022

Accelerator interviews
Thursday 8 September 2022

Accelerator Stage
3 October 2021 to 27 January 2023

Maximum contract value
£350,000

What does this mean?

Q&A session

A live Q&A session was held with the Challenge Sponsor team on Monday 13 June 2022 at 11:00. A recording of the session can be viewed here:

Why does this Challenge need to be solved?

The scale of violence against women (VAW) in Scotland is huge with over 64,000 incidents of domestic abuse (DA) alone and over 2,200 rapes REPORTED annually; mostly perpetrated by men against women with many more incidents going unreported. 25% of Police Scotland’s time and budget is spent on DA alone.

The lives of women and men are ruined by VAW, both as affected witnesses and victims. It is widely accepted that effective prevention will come from changing attitudes within communities and must include non-perpetrating men in the solution.

White Ribbon Scotland (WRS) is a registered charity (SCIO) which works with men and women to specifically reach out to men and raise their awareness of VAW, educate them about what men can do to play an active part in bringing about change and involve them in that change. We do this by creating White Ribbon Status Projects in local communities of all kinds; geographical areas, sports teams, educational establishments, religious groups, etc. Through these projects we connect with local community members and recognize successful work in engaging men as allies to help end VAW by awarding White Ribbon Status.

We emphasize that this recognition is for good work done to date, however the aim thereafter is to ensure the projects become fully sustainable local campaigns which will build on each other to influence change across Scotland as a whole. It is important that the number of such projects continues to expand.

The demand from organizations/communities wishing to take on a WRS Status Project is steadily increasing however WRS only has sufficient funding for two members of staff to oversee them. Managing our involvement with a large and growing number of WRS Status Projects will become evident in our staff being able to provide training and support, record relevant data/information and decide on issuing awards.

Staff time also needs to be dedicated to individual events, funding, running our Ambassador programme, organising conferences and maintaining our social media presence.

It is clear that a technological solution could assist WRS to better manage and sustain the Status Projects, allow for interactive engagements with local volunteers, hold all relevant information in an easily accessible and maintained format, and maintain track of our commitments.

How will we know the Challenge has been solved?

Success in the challenge of improving how WRS staff manage their interactions with Project Steering Group Members and active volunteers will initially become evident in the level of contact we maintain and ease with which those contacts can influence successful outcomes, which can be measured in respect of the number of local community members involved, how many people interact with the Status Projects, how many events are held to raise awareness of VAW and influence a change in attitudes amongst men who are in a position to influence change.

The overall effectiveness of maintaining successful community status projects and sustaining them in the long term will become evident in a number of ways beyond simply recording data on the projects themselves.

These include:

• More men come forward to be active bystanders and contributors to change, having recognised they have a role to play in helping to end VAW

• More genres of communities become involved and influence peer communities to follow them e.g. A trades Union or a housing association takes on a Status Project and then encourages others to do the same.

• Men are seen to be more active on social media contributing to the effort to effect societal changes relevant to ending VAW

• Academic led Attitude Surveys can be carried out throughout the communities involved to measure the effect on attitudinal change

• More men when approached in public spaces are aware of White Ribbon Scotland and what we do

• Women comment on men being vocal about their opposition to VAW and the attitudes and behaviours which tend to condone it

• More men sign the WRS pledge not to ‘commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women in all its forms’

• Crime figures relevant to VAW decrease

Who are the end users of the solution likely to be?

There are two main categories of those that we believe will be end users. Those who are directly involved locally with the status projects, whether these be steering group members, local volunteer speakers or ambassadors, and those who will be positively affected by the work we do to help eliminate VAW.

A technical solution will provide a better way for those who are directly involved with the project, making it easier for them to update/contact us, manage what they need for their project and to track their progress.

At White Ribbon Scotland, we believe that the education surrounding gender based violence will benefit everyone of every gender. Toxic masculinity, VAW and the attitudes, behaviours and inequality which lead to it adversely affect men as well as women, and the education provided through our WRS status projects will provide the change of culture and opinions that will promote gender equality leading to the elimination of violence against women. 

As well as a specific end VAW user group, we believe this challenge has the ability to meet the requirements of larger network based Organisations, with multiple nodes/actors and help manage and measure their contributions to national outcomes in Scotland.

There was an emerging idea from CivTech 6 challenge of CAS to identify a solution to the need for a self-moderating and regulating Community Network. This would be Community software to connect the distributed network of volunteers. A place to share best practice and advice. There was also discussion of how Federated search tool allows advisers to use a single search bar to discover content from several sources of a network database, make connections and suggest connections to the user, in terms of a trusted resource/AI librarian approach for under-resourced voluntary sector agencies to share knowledge better. Therefore, there would appear to be a wider marketplace for this solution.

Has the Challenge Sponsor attempted to solve this problem before?

Within the limitations of our staffing capacity, which is one of the relevant issues leading us to seek a bespoke project management approach, we have looked at some ‘off the shelf’ solutions such as ‘Trello’ and ‘Asana’ however they do not appear to meet our needs.  As the only primary prevention anti-VAW campaign in Scotland addressing VAW by specifically reaching out to men to play their part, through community based WRS Status Projects, we seek a system which can address some of the standard project management requirements, whilst also being suitable for our volunteers to use to facilitate exchanges of information and at the same time be viable to assist our limited staff members keep effective track of and provide support to a large number of projects.

Will a solution need to integrate with any existing systems or equipment?

It is unlikely that there will be a need for integration to other systems, but if this is suggested as part of the proposed solution to the challenge it can be explored on an individual basis.  e.g. there may be some scope for integration with the WRS website, but that would always be open to discussion rather than being an anticipated or required element.

Any technologies or features the Challenge Sponsor wishes to explore or avoid?

There are no particular technologies that are imperative for us to use to explore the solution – we are very much open to recommendations. However, in regard to features the overall approach should be to develop a technical solution to:

• Efficiently facilitate the development and continuation of many projects which will steadily increase and form links

• Allow a small number of staff members to provide support and advice to these

• Provide a method for WRS staff to send and receive updates on progress and allow for involved volunteers to directly use the system to lodge reports.

• It would be extremely useful to include a merchandise order and supply facility

A strong desire is that especially for a small charity, the solution developed should be self-moderating and make connections for people, between their individual actions, spotting themes, making suggestions, tagging and grouping activities and enabling better knowledge sharing.

Given the potential for large amounts of text data, the challenge would be interested in understanding how distributed search and analytics engines could be utilized to find and make connections in data for individual actors within a wider network. Storing data locally but analysing in an aggregated network manner to highlight relevant articles and make connections locally, whilst providing aggregated network wide data insights nationally. Also given the limited capacity of the voluntary sector to manage and maintain larger information exchange networks, it would be useful if using machine learning, AI and other tools the network platform could be self-moderating.

We would envisage maybe some of the pitched solutions might use Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications or tools to help gain insights from data and to automate routine certain tagging or administration tasks, to keep information sharing pathways clean and tidy for clients, to stimulate continued use. As a long-standing issue with such “communities of practice or Wiki sites” is that they require intensive moderation to keep useable for users. A goal would be to build a system that enables collaboration and sharing for WRS and other networked charities but also can make sense of text, patterns within it at an aggregated level and could automatically perform key administrative or analytical collation tasks.

What is the commercial opportunity beyond a CivTech contract?

There may be potential for the core elements of the technical solution to form the basis of something which could be amended to provide bespoke support to other Third Sector Organisations which engage with volunteers to deliver projects at a local level.

The social opportunity is also around how all actors across Scotland could feed in their actions and have them sorted by AI into contributions to National Performance Framework outcomes or contributions from participatory citizens assemblies. Outputs from this challenge would be an opportune moment to review the “bottom-up” contributions of local actors/small organisations to national wellbeing and pilot a new approach of data collection and tagging. Again this would chime well with the stated views of the Deputy First Minister below, to promote more relationship based work rather than an overt focus on transactional approaches is pertinent.  The next National Performance Framework (NPF) review must start before June 2023 and this work could be a good opportunity for co-creation and production of a contribution to the next suite of national outcomes and associated indicators and continuing monitoring of local action through a tech-based solution, sharing knowledge between projects horizontally, but also vertically between communities and governance organisations.

The DFM stated to the Scottish Parliament in October 2021 the review will focus on how we can ‘better achieve impact that is recognised and felt by the people who live in Scotland, and we will consult widely across Scotland, including with the Parliament’.  This will provide an opportunity for focused practical engagement with stakeholders and the public on recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.  In addition, it is also a platform for wider engagement on Scotland’s future wellbeing and a (re) focus on our support during the COVID-19 recovery and a clear practical term of a localised reporting ahead of the proposed Wellbeing and Sustainable Development Bill, demonstrating local contributions to building community wealth through the work of all charities and how taking a local place-based approach to addressing national outcomes can deliver national outcomes.

The challenge would then provide reporting in a more localised manner for future NPFs to report against the current thematic indicators, but in a manner that enables contributions to be made more easily and visibly by all sectors, but especially the voluntary sector to national outcomes.

Who are the stakeholders?

• Staff – Our Campaign Director Davy and Project Coordinator Rebekah would be heading up the project in regards of staff.

• Trustees – Along with Davy and Rebekah, a select group of our Trustees may become involved in the project financing.

• Volunteers taking part in the Status Projects – this could involve representatives of the various roles undertaken within the projects and their input could ensure they can easily navigate and utilise the developed solution.

• Citizens Advice Scotland

• Scottish Government, Directorate for Justice

• Third-parties – there are other individuals who have participated in or supported our work who may be in a position to contribute their experience to identify additional elements which would be beneficial.

Who’s in the Challenge Sponsor team?

• Challenge team – Campaign Director Davy, Project Coordinator Rebekah and identified Trustees from the Board of our charity. As paid members of staff Davy and Rebekah will provide their time, labour and operational expertise to ensure the success of the Challenge.  We can also provide meeting rooms within our offices when required with facilities for presentations, etc.

• George Eckton, Director of Advice Services, Citizens Advice Scotland

• Jeff Gibbons, Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Unit, Scottish Government Justice Directorate

What is the policy background to the Challenge?

The Challenge addresses technological support to our work as a SCIO registered charity and will assist us to meet our commitments to delivering the VAW prevention elements of the Scottish Government’s Equally Safe Strategy (which addresses the response to Violence Against Women).

Our Constitution details that we operate to deliver on the following charitable purposes

Charitable purposes

The SCIO will operate in line with the following charitable purposes.

1. The advancement of education (with particular reference to addressing gender based violence)

2. The advancement of human rights, conflict resolution or reconciliation

3. The promotion of equality and diversity.

Increasing the number of functional and sustainable WRS Status Projects is a stated aim which resulted in WRS receiving our current funding under the Delivering Equally Safe Fund – this Challenge sets out to seek technological support for this aim.

Also, Generally as a charity which is a network of smaller groups or individual actors working across a larger geography, it is so important despite geographical distance to maintain a sense of a network and belonging.

Before discussing a sense of the intangible nature of network connections. We are clear that individual WRS groups are all individual members of the wider movement/association. This is a transactional decision, where they seek to take advantage from a collective grouping in a very explicit manner, seeking to generate benefits for individual membership by being part of a wider collective which can lead to example benefits such as potential cost savings, brand promotion and influencing by having a  say in networking opportunities in its widest sense. However, none of these behaviours in or of themselves make WRS a network. It’s fundamentally a transactional and financial allocation environment with certain governing rules or eligibility criteria, which is not fundamentally wrong or inefficient; it’s just not a network or a networked organisation in its more advanced sense of development.

What is “a network”. There is a proposed rule in management theory that if you can fit your organisation onto a traditional organisational chart, it’s not a network and certainly in that sense the WRS width, scope and scale passes that test. We have formal membership structures as a charity but to be a network we don’t have or need formal structures to exist and provide benefit. The vast majority of its benefit is intangible but also unidentified at present and comes from making and maintaining organic connections between local actors.

The term “network” is hard to pin down, we all potentially have a very different view of its meaning and it is contingent on our own values and attitudes or experiences. It could be something viewed as an invisible structure which is organic mainly in its practices and more defined by its boundaries than its internal structure. There are lots of different scales of networks. However, in functional terms we could still view a network as a series of points e.g. individual groups and how they are connected and as much if not more so governed by culture and behaviours than rules and procedures.

At present, WRS connections as an Association tend to be more formal between central WRS and local groups at the, but the real value of a network is how we enable quicker linkages between all multi-parts within that network and stimulate discussion and information exchange and creativity, renewed efficacy to end gender based violence. Also do we need to be careful what network type is identified? Do we want to create a network where information is drawn to the centre to be re-distributed? This could mean communications of all forms are too slow in getting where it’s needed in a network for learning and culture change or developmental sense in sharing of information. Do we need a network that is efficient and promotes effective collaboration and a culture that supports all members and not just main part of WRS body itself, which is limited in capacity, but from all members in small and informal structures supporting each other to gain value and benefit from being part of a wider network?

SCVO’s Chief Executive Anna Fowlie has previously called on the voluntary sector to embrace Scotland’s National Performance Framework (NPF). Referring to it as a ‘beacon of hope’, she explained that the framework must be more than an aspirational rallying call. We must measure our services, whatever sector they are in, against its outcomes but the problem has been measuring the input of voluntary sector impact within a framework of high level macro-economic/societal national outcomes.

The NPF – which consists of a national purpose, values which guide the approach, and 11 outcomes that describe the kind of Scotland it aims to create – was refreshed in 2018. Since then, it has been presented as a performance framework for all of Scotland and not just for the government; this includes the voluntary sector. The NPF can help demonstrate the sector’s contribution to Scotland’s grand challenges. The solution to this challenge could also be a smart way for voluntary organisations who are already using the NPF to shape services and dialogue with public sector colleagues and to help make the NPF a reality through the “back-office” aggregation of data through AI/NLP algorithms of background data collection. This could identify and remove key barriers to voluntary sector engagement, charities large and small such as WRS, with the NPF and hopefully some solutions for overcoming them.