Met Office Supercomputer Audit Review

Description

Work with Met Office teams (principally the Economics & Analysis Team and the Supercomputing Benefits Team, plus others as required) to: • review the existing Theory of Change, in the context of the Supercomputing Business Case, in order to be achieve clarity around the programme's expectations, and what can and should be evaluated. Propose amendments to the existing theory of change where necessary. The existing Met Office theory of Change and Supercomputing Change Logic Maps are included as Appendices 4 and 5. • review of existing monitoring data from across the Met Office - information on the currently available data sets is already available. A high-level overview of current data collected is included as Appendix 3. • scope and design a monitoring approach for each Socio-Economic Benefit, using existing data wherever appropriate but including requirements for additional data gathering where necessary. This approach will need to address the extent to which observed benefits can be robustly attributed to the new Supercomputer. These benefits may arise from service continuity and / or service improvements. The types of methodology that may be considered may include: o the production of one or more counterfactuals against which measured data can be compared to give an indication of benefits realised o tracking data on customer use (volume and quality) of Met Office services; this data may or may not currently be gathered by the Met Office o researching and compiling case studies to complement quantitative analyses and to include "real-world" stories to illustrate the impacts of the Met Office's services. • plan the gathering and analysis of the necessary data, including agreeing the required frequency of data collection • agree how the data gathered will be shaped into a series of reports • propose an alignment to the Met Office's governance structure. The audience for these reports is currently assumed to be the Met Office's governance structure (particularly the Supercomputing SRO and Programme Board, and the Met Office Exec), and stakeholders in Government (particularly the Cabinet Office and DSIT) but as the design of the reporting process and outputs progresses, a better alignment may be proposed. The supplier will be required to advise on optimising the cost of delivering the subsequent packages of work, making use of existing and available Met Office resource wherever appropriate, while maintaining sufficient division of responsibilities to allow objective assessment and reporting.