The Digital Planning Maturity Assessment (DPMA) is designed to help your authority reflect on its digital maturity over time.
Repeating the assessment helps you understand where change has happened, what may have contributed to it and where further attention may be needed.
- Before you start the DPMA
- Review your previous results and action plan
- Bring colleagues back together
- Prepare your responses
- Find your authority’s ONS code
- Complete the repeat assessment
- What happens after you submit
- Get help with the DPMA
Before you start the DPMA
Find your authority’s previous results pack and action plan. You will use them to reflect on what has happened since you last completed the DPMA.
If you cannot find either document:
- Ask colleagues who were involved in the previous DPMA if they have copies.
- Contact your community manager if your team cannot find them.
Community managers can access previous results packs and action plans.
Nominate someone to lead the repeat assessment. This can be the person who led it previously or someone new.
The lead should coordinate contributions from colleagues, share the repeat question guide, gather and agree responses, submit the assessment and share the updated results.
Your invitation to repeat the DPMA will tell you when your authority needs to submit its assessment.
Review your previous results and action plan
Review your previous results and action plan with relevant colleagues before answering the assessment questions again.
Discuss:
- which actions have been completed, are in progress or have not been started
- what has changed within the planning service
- what has supported progress
- what has made progress more difficult
- whether your priorities have changed
Your previous scores provide a starting point for the discussion. Do not copy them into the repeat assessment without reviewing how your service works now.
Bring colleagues back together
Involve colleagues who understand how different parts of the planning service currently work.
The people who contributed previously may not be the right people to involve this time. Consider whether roles, responsibilities or ways of working have changed.
You do not need everyone to answer every question. Ask colleagues to contribute to the areas they understand.
You can gather and agree responses by:
- sharing relevant pages of the repeat question guide
- collecting responses in a shared document or team drive
- meeting online or in person to discuss the questions
Choose an approach that works for your authority and make sure all responses are returned to the person leading the assessment.
Prepare your responses
Download the repeat question guide before opening the online assessment. You can share the guide with colleagues who do not have access to the ODP Hub.
Download the repeat Digital Planning Maturity Assessment question guide
Use it to:
- review all the assessment questions
- gather evidence about how your service works now
- agree a current response to each question
- record any context that helps explain your scores
- consider why your responses have changed or stayed the same
Base your responses on current practice rather than future plans.
The repeat assessment also includes optional questions about changes in each area. These allow you to explain any developments, improvements or changes in priorities that have influenced your responses.
A score remaining the same does not necessarily mean that no progress has been made. Use the additional questions to explain relevant changes or barriers that the scores do not show.
Find your authority’s ONS code
You will need your authority’s 9-character ONS code to complete the online assessment.
To find it:
- Go to Explore local statistics on the ONS website.
- Enter your council’s name.
- Select your council from the results.
- Copy the code displayed after its name, for example E08000031.
Keep the code with your agreed responses so it is available when you start the form.
Complete the repeat assessment
Before opening the online assessment, make sure you have:
- an agreed current response to every question
- any optional evidence or context you want to provide about what has changed
- your authority’s 9-character Office for National Statistics code
- around 40 minutes to complete the form without interruption
The form cannot be saved after you start. You must complete and submit it in one session.
What happens after you submit
We will send an updated results pack to the person who submitted the assessment. This will normally be within 10 working days of the submission deadline given to your authority.
The results pack will:
- show your authority’s current and previous scores
- help you identify where its digital maturity has changed
- provide a benchmark against the anonymised average for authorities that have completed the DPMA
- suggest actions and resources based on the current results
- include a template for updating your action plan
The benchmark does not rank authorities or compare individual authorities with each other.
Review the updated results with colleagues and use them to agree your authority’s priorities for the next 6 to 12 months.