Centralised Spreadsheet Refresh

The Centralised Spreadsheet is used by various teams within MHRA to track work. The spreadsheet contains two sets of data – NACS (New Licenses) and VACS (Variations). The centralised spreadsheet currently has over 14,550 rows and 50+ columns, with 300+ rows imported on a monthly basis.

The spreadsheet is the only record within the agency of who does what, and it’s become difficult to manage, due to the limited workflow management and historical records. The spreadsheet also records when/if MHRA gets paid, and the Finance team use it for tracking income and payments. This could potentially add risk of possible duplications.

The spreadsheet contains work which comes from the CHMP (Committee on Human Medicinal Products) and PRAC (Pharmacovigilance Risk assessment Committee). Both committees work on different time points, but some licences have to go through both committees. This potentially causes problems of missing timetables, as the spreadsheet is used to track work for assessors.

Tracking bids in the spreadsheet is based on a contract with the EMA and there is no consistency from the EMA as to when contracts gets paid, which means finance have to check the spreadsheet to ensure things are covered. Overtime, the spreadsheet has become unstable and requires expert knowledge, which does not necessarily reside within the MHRA. When the MHRA moved to Office 2010 from Office XP, a lot of functionality was lost, specifically related to sharing. The ability to do basic searching and reporting is difficult, as is the ability to make updates or change fields etc. The spreadsheet is also very slow to open.

2. Proposed Change

The new cloud based workflow management system must provide the ability to:

• Allow users to move through the various stages to completion for bids
• Notify users of changes to cases via emails
• Allow users to only see what their profile allows
• Provide management, and dashboard reports, as well individual ad hoc reports for users
• Search for cases and provide full history of changes to cases
• Maintain financial records for payments
• Provide system administration and ability for admin users to add to the workflow process and make modifications to existing workflow processes
• Provide an easy to use and intuitive user interface

Additional information: This contract was awarded under the Crown Commercial Services Framework RM1557 - G-Cloud