One of the planned next steps for Nesta’s work with Birmingham City Council will involve building and deploying the co-designed early years data tool. Birmingham City Council are leading on this work and plan for the tool to sit on Birmingham City Council’s City Observatory so that the tool is available to the public as well as professionals.
To maximise the value of the tool and build an evidence base for its impact, Nesta recommend that Birmingham City Council and its early years partners:
- identify the most important specific use cases for professionals in Birmingham and ensure these use cases are at the forefront of development and deployment decisions. These use cases should be linked to key decisions taken regularly in the early years
- run a series of meetings and webinars to engage different professionals across Birmingham and members of the public around the tool and encourage its use for decision making
- implement an evaluation alongside deployment of the tool to ascertain its impact and link this to the identified key use cases and decisions
- embed the development and use of the tool into ‘business as usual’
- continue to adapt and further develop the tool, and follow and adopt a user-led, prototyping approach when doing this to ensure the tool remains useful and relevant for its users
