Local authority

A Slivers-of-Time marketplace can serve three aims for LA's: more local people working, lower costs in service delivery and local control of services. It takes minutes for any LA to set up their marketplace. And it costs nothing: the ODPM has prepaid usage for LA's until mid 2008.

• IDE&A assessment of Slivers-of-Time

Slivers-of-Time marketplaces emerged from the e-innovations strand within the e-gov agenda at ODPM. It was jointly sponsored by London Borough of Newham, London Connects and the Regional Centre of Excellence within the Association of London Government. Thoroughly piloted in East London, with employers including LB Newham and LB Tower Hamlets, a Slivers-of-Time marketplace can now be launched by any LA in the country.

A London Borough of Newham resident carries out two hour's research for her council.

Slivers-of-Time marketplaces are best suited to work that is: (a) easily learned, half a day's induction or less (b) naturally fragmented, made up of short assignments such as homecare calls for example (c) irregular in its need, ad hoc cleaning for example.

Types of work that a council might usefully purchase Slivers-of-Time include:

• Slivers-of-Time and the future of public services

What are the key decisions for a council launching a Slivers-of-Time marketplace?

We suggest the following steps to evaluate the role of Slivers-of-Time Workers for a particular council:

• Identify the spending power the council can mobilise to go through the marketplace. It may help to arrange for one of the Slivers-of-Time team to talk with the Heads of Regeneration, HR and Procurement. That will quickly establish if the spending can be found across existing council activities. The spending may be in two categories:
  • Existing spending, of which there can be two types:
    • council procurement for example see the table below
    • local initiatives, for example run by the LSP, where spending that was to be spent on formal jobs or sub contractors can go through the new marketplace
  • 
    New funding to assist in the launch (see our section on funding sources). Immediate contenders include LEGI funding for example.
• Decide who fulfils the agency role. It is a legal requirement that an entity acting as an employment business vets sellers and carries out payrolling/invoicing. They do this in return for a mark-up, agreed with their client, on each booking. HR will have a view on this but there are 4 obvious options:
  • Check if there is an agency in the area already offering or planning a Slivers-of-Time channel. You can contact us to check this: click here to send us an email
  • The council's existing temporary worker agency is asked to launch a Slivers-of-Time channel. They can be referred to our section on launching a marketplace for agencies.
  • The council initiates a tender process among local agencies.
  • An in-house agency is set up initially.

  This decision will depend on any Managed Service or Master Vendor Agreement the authority has in place. It may be that the terms of that agreement do not make it attractive for suppliers to accommodate these very low cost bookings. In this case the council can ask that another supplier be permitted to deal with bookings of, say, less than a full day's work.

  Alternately, a Slivers-of-Time option can become part of a Managed Service. A decision is simply made whether any particular booking is "traditional" or Slivers-of-Time. (Any requirement with a duration less than two days or a start point of less than 4 working hours might be deemed Slivers-of-Time for example.) The supplier sets up as a Slivers-of-Time agency, possibly with other agencies providing sellers and all invoices can be consolidated for the council as normal.

  

  How Slivers-of-Time bookings can become a component within a Managed Service Agreement
• Prepare the how to launch plan available on this site; obtain member approval and designate a member as champion.
• Consider staging a launch event for local employers who may follow the council into the new market. Perhaps a session at the Town Hall addressed by the council leader? We provide presentation materials in our documents to download section.
• Once the market is up and running deploy some of your initial sellers to leaflet target areas in the borough in search of further sellers who will benefit.

• Beginner's guide to Slivers-of-Time Working
• localegov Product Share: Slivers of Time Working
• Regeneration & Renewal article about savings from Slivers-of-Time
• Municipal Journal article about Slivers-of-Time
• Solace newsletter item about Slivers-of-Time
• ALG newsletter article about Slivers-of-Time
• SCIE Social Care Institute for Excellence article about Slivers-of-Time
• Register interest