20. This activity area includes research, development and innovation activities i.e. the development of capabilities that enable the organisation to undertake new activities, or to improve the efficiency of existing ones. It promotes the re-use and sharing of infrastructure (statistical and technical), both inside the organisation and across organisations, to facilitate harmonisation and to improve the coherence of statistical outputs. Some of these activities may be outsourced to partners in the private or academic sectors, or even to other statistical organisations. When a new capability or a capability improvement is fully integrated in Production, its support is transferred to one or more activities of Corporate Support.

Figure 4. Capability Development activity area of the GAMSO

21. This activity area is broken down into 4 activities. The activities are:

• Plan Capability Improvements
• Develop Capability Improvements
• Monitor Capability Improvements
• Transfer Support of Capability Improvements

Plan Capability Improvements

22. These activities aim at planning the best way forward to develop a new capability or improve an organisation's capabilities. They require a thorough organisational view of change requirements, the prioritisation of options through an efficient, iterative approval process until a work programme for capability improvements is finalised.

23. These activities further coordinate the planning and resourcing of cross-cutting/reusable capability improvement projects (both large and small), to ensure key improvement work is integrated across the organisation, with interdependencies understood and the resources optimized across the work programme.

24. These activities also monitor the ongoing progress of the work programme and report to the relevant governance fora to ensure all required change requests occur in an efficient and effective manner.

25. The activities include:

• Identify disruptions and capability improvements
• Propose capability improvement projects
• Manage capability improvement programmes

Develop Capability Improvements

26. These activities develop approved improvement projects from the requirements stage through to their completion. The developers will undertake background research, define the detailed requirements, coordinate the design and building, and finalize all aspects of the capabilities being developed, including their deployment for operational use.

27. The activities mainly concern the development of capability improvements for multiple statistical business processes, including cases where capability improvements are developed through partnering with other statistical organisation or through implementing reusable infrastructure originally developed by others. Capability improvements in the context of a single statistical business process are included in the Production activity area.

28. The activities include:

• Undertake background research
• Define detailed capability requirements
• Design capability solution
• Build/procure and deploy capability solution

Monitor Capability Improvements

29. These activities aim at monitoring the organisation capabilities, ensuring the organisation reaps maximum benefits from investments. They involve maintaining capabilities, evaluating them or suggesting where improvements are required. Staff members undertaking these activities effectively become the custodians/reference persons for the capabilities, taking responsibility for their fitness for purpose. These include:

• Maintain capability improvements
• Promote capability improvements
• Evaluate capability improvements

Transfer Support of Capability Improvements

30. These activities provide the technical hands-on assistance required across the organisation to ensure that the capability improvements are actually used in support of the statistical work programme. These activities also guide the successful operation of individual reusable business processes and transfer of shared infrastructures. When a capability improvement is fully integrated in Production, its support is transferred to one or more activities of Corporate Support. These include:

• Transfer design
• Transfer operations
• Transfer user support