Introducing the BVI Framework

Memory institutions and digital resources have an impact, whether it is measured or not. The purpose of impact measurement is to understand that impact explicitly and to become purposeful in trying to achieve it and narrate its benefits to the broader community and decision makers. This chapter is about the implementation of impact assessment within a framework to control the activity.

The BVI Framework is not the impact assessment itself, but it structures the activity and plans of impact assessment. It acts as a way of controlling a process that usually has many moving parts that may be occurring over differing timescales, with possibly different teams, resources or points of focus. The Framework itself will mainly be of use to those co-ordinating the activity to track activity and measures against impact indicators and objectives.

Implementation of an impact assessment is achieved best through miniplans developed within the bigger plan. For example, the mini-plan may be as simple as flagging the need for a small survey of users attending a launch event. The organisation should be in the habit of asking impact-related questions whenever possible. Little and often is the mantra of impact data gathering. Use the Framework to keep the measures and the data collected synchronised and controlled.

Every activity planned will come with a mini action plan that states the following:

• 1 a description of the proposed activity;

• 2 the resources required to deliver the planned activity, with a budget and timescale;

• 3 the expected benefits from the activity;

• 4 the likely outputs from the activity in terms of an amount of product or service delivery;

• 5 how the activity will map to the Perspective–Value pairings and the organisation's strategies;

• 6 how the activity can be measured to answer as many as possible of the Framework's impact objective questions.

It is then up to management to decide if the activity is worthwhile. In most cases, the resources needed to achieve many impact measures will already exist (web metrics, for instance). As planned activities grow in scale or breadth, then specific impact measures for an activity will need to be designed.