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Digital Drive evaluation
Client:
Business Durham
Study objectives:
• Complete an interim and final Summative Assessment in line with guidance from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government;
• Identify the economic impacts attributable to the project including intended and unintended outcomes;
• Complete case studies of businesses that accessed support.
Andrea McGuigan – Programme Manager
"Thrive Economics carried out a series of in depth surveys with stakeholders and SMEs with the utmost professionalism and produced a very detailed and informative report. We would not hesitate to recommend them."
Digital Drive had a total cost of £4m, of which £2m was from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Phase 1 ran to September 2020 and Phase 2 will run to December 2023. The project's Phase 1 aims were to:
• engage and energise businesses to consider how they can improve their business by adopting digital technologies;
• remove the practical and financial barriers to businesses in doing so; and
• embed a culture where the desire and ability to exploit digital technologies becomes a core business skill.
We analysed and adjusted the project's logic model, and reviewed the context at the time it was designed mapping key trends over the 3 year delivery period. We designed a bespoke survey, issued it online and completed 100 telephone interviews to boost the response rate.
Our analysis showed that 75% of businesses had not accessed business support before, and 79% had not previously invested in digital technology. In terms of outcomes 77% of businesses gained a clearer understanding of the benefits of investing in digital technology thereby addressing a key market failure.
We used data from the Inter-Departmental Business Register to create the counter-factual position, and found that businesses assisted by Digital Drive say employment rise by 8.1% over 3 years compared to 2% in the counter-factual group. Over 5 years Digital Drive will create £24.9m in Gross Value Added allowing for deadweight, leakage, displacement and substitution.