Tuesday 6 January 2009
The Big Oxford Computer Co. Ltd.
The Union Learning Fund (ULF) was created in 1998 by the Government to provide training in the work place to increase people's basic skills. Each year a new application round opens so that unions can apply for funding to run projects / courses for their members in conjunction with their employers.
An allocation of £18m per year is provided to the ULF to fund new union learning projects.
https://www.unionlearningfund.org.uk/secure/
The ULF was originally managed using a range of electronic documents and paper files. Unionlearn commissioned the development of a secure web enabled online grant application, processing and management system that allows unions to submit funding bids and the Union Learning Fund to manage these through to successful contracts and during the term of the contract.
The ULF system is an Internet based grant application and management system. The need for an online system came about so that the ULF team, who are located in three different locations around the country, could centrally manage the information for each application and awarded contract.
The system provides the following overall functionality:
Applicants submit a pre-qualification expression of interest (EOI) form prior to selection. A new collaborative feature (incorporated in 2008 for Round 12) allows the applicant to submit the EOI in its current or draft state to the ULF team for feedback. Also a new facility allows the applicant to generate a Word document of their current application form and includes an email facility to send this to other colleagues for comments and final review.
A new Web 2.0 AJAX interface was developed for the EOI form, so that certain questions are displayed depending upon answers to previous answers. This makes the process much more dynamic and streamlined for applicants.
On submission of the EOI form is reviewed by the ULF Team and if approved the applicant will be invited to complete a full bid application. BOCC worked with the ULF project team to define the scope of work for the changes required to the system for this new approach.
On approval, the full bid application form is generated dynamically from data submitted via the EOI form. The final application only contains the relevant sections that the applicant needs to submit based on information already provided.
The full application form process also now works in exactly the same way as the EOI, complete with the dynamic questions interface and is entirely online.
One feature of the extensive functions available to ULF contract administrators is the outputs and outcomes data extraction and reporting facility.
ULF reporting provides reports in a number of formats:
A summary report provides a list of outcomes for a specified date range and can be further filtered to show only one round or bid. The detail report also matches the outcome references across all bids for a given date range.
Our creative design team developed an innovative look and feel for the online application interface.
The ULF system was developed in 2004 for the roll out of Round 8 and integration of projects from Round 7. The system was developed with scalability in mind so that new rounds can be added in future years. Testimony to this has already been the additions of Rounds 10 and 11, with Round 12 which went live in December 2008.
The system utilises: