A School of Continuous Improvement impact report closes out a two-year equivalence trial of an automated rates-notice reminder system, finding no measurable effect on late payment, and follows the finding into a delivery-only performance contract now applied across every reminder programme a services-delivery agency runs.
A two-year equivalence trial found an automated rates-notice reminder changed nothing measurable about late payment, and the vendor's contract now rewards messages sent, not debts settled, across every reminder programme it runs.
The School of Continuous Improvement has closed out a two-year trial asking whether an automated reminder system changes who pays a council rates notice late — and, for the first time, has let a completed null result set the terms of a vendor’s contract rather than sit as a footnote in one.
A services-delivery agency running the reminder platform across a dozen council contracts has renewed its performance agreement around a single measure: how many reminders are confirmed delivered, not what any of them change. The measure now applies to every reminder programme the agency runs on the University’s recommendation, from rates through to parking permits, with no review clause attached.
A finding doesn’t have to be good news to be worth acting on quickly. It only has to be finished.
— Dr Osei Vandermeer, Research Fellow and Convenor, Review Cadence Observatory
The underlying work, led by Dr Marit Osayande, held the reminder trial to the same pre-registered equivalence standard the School now applies to every commissioned evaluation: a bound set in advance, and a result reported against it regardless of which way it fell. “We would rather retire an instrument on a null result than let it wait for a positive one that might never come,” Dr Osayande said.
The full report is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.qzyksg.