ACE hands £800,000 contract to ‘radical transformation’ consultants

Arts Council England (ACE) has awarded an £833,000 contract for “service design and digital transformation support” to a London-based consultancy firm, it has emerged.

Information published on the government’s Contracts Finder website shows that the contract – for “a partner to work across a range of programmes to support service design and delivery during the next phase of our transformation” – was put out to tender late last year.

The contract has an initial term of 20 January 2025 to 31 March 2027, coinciding with the official end date of the current National Portfolio.

There is an option to extend the contract for a year until 31 March 2028 – the date to which ACE has requested government to further extend the portfolio investment period.

‘New ways of working’

“This support will help ACE to test and deliver new ways of working that are simple, accessible, user focused and digital first,” the tender says.

After receiving three bids for the contract, ACE selected consultancy firm Public Digital – which specialises in “supporting organisations through radical transformation” – to deliver the work.

Founded by four former civil servants involved with UK government digital strategy, the firm’s areas of work include digital strategy, data strategy, service design, digital capability building, technology review and “de-risking” programmes.

“We are a transformation consultancy that works with leading businesses, governments and global institutions, helping them to change their ways of working to become more responsive, adaptable and impactful,” the firm’s website states.

‘Onerous’ reporting requirements

ACE chief executive Darren Henley has previously said he wants to simplify “onerous” reporting requirements for recipients of funding by 2027.

“There’s two things I’m talking to our team about as we think about our next funding round – first is how can we best serve our customers, whether that be applicants to us or our audiences, and how can we simplify things?” he said during an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row programme in April 2024.

ACE is also facing ongoing questions around the useability and future of the Illuminate audience data platform that arts and culture organisations are required to use to report audience data.

In March ACE apologised to cultural organisations after ticket sales figures uploaded to the platform were made publicly available online.

The £1.6m contract for the platform, controversially awarded to PricewaterhouseCoopers in November 2022, ends in March 2026 – two years ahead of the date ACE wants the current portfolio investment programme extended to.

ACE has also promised changes to the user experience of its much-maligned funding portal Grantium, which it has previously said will be announced in spring.