CivTech
About this good practice
CivTech’s mission is to drive an innovation in the public sector by collaboratively solving challenges that make people’s lives better and create sustainable, high growth businesses. For public sector organisations, CivTech offers a route to develop highly innovative products and services in a fast, efficient and safe way, using private sector systems such as open challenges and tech accelerators. For innovator and entrepreneurs it offers a unique opportunity to engage with the public sector and get the chance to solve a problem and build a business. CivTech also offers a great way to develop innovation in a collaborative, cost-effective and managed environment that puts the needs of the user first. It has developed a model that takes private sector best practices in regard to tech development and harnesses them for public sector use. These include Open Challenges, exploration schemes, the tech accelerator model, the Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and the Demo Day concept. These best practices form the process that takes problems public sector organisations in Scotland have and develops solutions for them that are both immediately deployable and scalable. This process is called the CivTech Innovation Flow. It uses a multistage procurement process to select potential solutions that go onto the CivTech Accelerator where MVPs are developed, and successful MVPs are taken through to further contract funding to fully develop the solution, ready for commercial use.
Resources needed
In 2016 CivTech delivered an Accelerator of six Challenges (four staff, budget of £500,000). Subsequent iterations of CivTech grew, in 2021-22 it delivered a total of 16 Challenges ( ten staff, budget of £2 mil). With a Business Case approved in 2022, funding for Challenges will be up to £46 mil.
Evidence of success
86% of teams participating in CiVTech are operational compared to the private sector norm where 20% of new businesses close within 12 months and 60% within 3 years. Over 90% of the companies have received follow-on contracts which compared to the typical private sector accelerator where just 20-30% of teams win further investment. In 2022, CivTech companies reported 287 jobs created and accelerated investment flow; the investment of £4.2 million in 2020 and to over £76 million in 2022.
Potential for learning or transfer
CivTech has engaged with a number of regions and nations internationally. Increasingly, we are being approached in regard to developing knowledge transfer projects, and in many cases being asked to consider operational engagement. Each case is different, and we tend to look at them individually.