Launch the Toolkit
FAME - Readiness Assessment Tool and Generic Framework Guidance
The RAT is a general-purpose tool that may be applied to any public sector multi-agency partnership. In the early stages of formation, and when some transformation of the partnership is called for, a comprehensive picture needs to be built up of the progress being made and the challenges outstanding. These challenges are likely to include acquiring the requisite knowledge to approach partnership development and acquire its ICT facilities. Knowing what has to be learned as a part of preparing action plans is essential to successful transformation. The human-relations and project management processes of partnership formation are very well documented elsewhere. The FAME RAT has a much broader aim, namely to ensure that the following dimensions are equally progressed:
- Multi agency practice development with an emphasis on information sharing.
- Development of an adequate ICT infrastructure and applications.
- Competent governance arrangements that cover the whole of the partnership’s activities including information governance and ICT infrastructure.
The FAME RAT is a self-evaluation tool that recognises that partnerships will have to learn about this new environment and how practice and ICT development may be intimately linked. It consists of a series of (assertive) statements one for each element against an EFQM model and for each of the FAME building blocks in the Generic Framework. The extent to which the statement represents the reality within the partnership enables an action plan to be developed to achieve full compliance. The group responsible for the formation or development of the partnership may use a scoring system to assess progress. It is suggested that scores, that should be evidenced, against each statement should be:
- 0: Need to start work to understand what this statement means for us.
- 1: Beginning to see a way forward to meeting this statement.
- 2: Understand the statement and making good progress to its achievement.
- 3: Fully confident that this statement represents our reality.
The FAME website will enable this scoring to be done automatically. Clicking the mouse on a statement will bring up relevant text from the FAME Generic Framework to help explain the meaning of the statement.
The FAME RAT may also be used manually by referring to the appropriate building blocks in the Generic Framework document. It may be helpful to take the building blocks in stages starting with the Scoping Statement, then taking the next three blocks (Legal Powers, Responsibilities and Policy, Information Sharing and Governance) followed by the next four (Identity Management, Infrastructure, Messages, Events and Transactions and Federation) and then finally Sustainability. It may also be useful to take Sustainability alongside the Scoping Statement.
An intention of using the RAT amongst different partners and professions is that there should be a growth in shared learning and language as well as firm action (for more information see Using the FAME Toolkit)
