Our commissioning criteria

We consider projects against a number of other criteria when deciding which to commission. These criteria are set out below. Those in Group A are the most important and projects generally need to fulfil all of them. Those in Group B are also important but not all these criteria need to be fulfilled.

Group A

• Potential to delight at least one of the target audiences
• Good value for money and the cost per user is appropriate to the target audience and the behaviour the project will elicit
• Risks and costs are commensurate with audience or strategic benefits
• Potential to engage target users with arts and culture
• Supportive of the National Curriculum (for those of school age, for use in or out of school) or promotes or supports lifelong learning or encourages digital take-up
• Ethically sound; organisation is appropriate recipient of government funding
• Evidence of managerial and fiscal competence, and the capability of the organisation to carry out the proposed activities. Record of professional activity of key project personnel.
• The team should be capable of working productively with each other, and with Culture Online
• The project will have high impact and there will be sufficient achievable promotion and distribution
• The project can substantially deliver its value by March 2006, or can be run so that there will be sufficient evidence by then that the project is certain to deliver value.
• The project will be innovative and enable target audiences to get something they wouldn’t otherwise get.
• The commissioned parties are willing to work broadly within our standard contract and terms
• Likely to lead to knowledge and experience of new techniques or technologies that will be applicable elsewhere in Government or the Non-Departmental Public Bodies, or will be of strategic benefit to Culture Online
• The project should be genuinely innovative in terms of its editorial concept, its promotion or its technology. However, to manage risk, projects should not be innovative on all fronts at the same time.
• Sound financial systems or structures in place, or the willingness to develop them
• There should be a real hunger to do the project among all the participants

Group B

• Long-term benefits or value to users
• Potential to engage target users with new technologies
• Good project management in place, or the ability to impose it
• Robust internal process, management and delivery mechanisms
• Meets one or more of the DCMS high level objectives (children, communities, economy, delivery)
• Participatory or enables users to add value for others
• Promotes social inclusion or reaches socially excluded users
• Creates a useful model that can be reproduced or used by others
• Creates useful sustainable networks
• The project might otherwise not happen
• Has potential for revenue generation
• Has potential to be self-sustaining over time
• Money, in cash or measurable kind is being brought to the table
• Releases cultural material into the public domain
• The total size of the project is likely to be between £200 and £400k.