Overview of the self-assessment

The CAF for local government involves a self-assessment of your organisation and your in scope critical systems.

Once you have set your scope, you can begin self-assessing your organisation (objectives A and D). This self-assessment will take approximately 40 hours for your team to complete.

You should complete your architecture mapping before you can begin assessing your critical systems (objectives B and C). Architecture mapping takes approximately 15 to 25 hours per system.

Self-assessing your critical systems will take approximately 60 hours per system for your team to complete.

What each self-assessment involves

Whether you are assessing your organisation or a critical system, you will need to:

1. Download either the self-assess your organisation workbook or the self-assess your critical systems workbook
2. Establish who needs to be involved to review each contributing outcome
3. Collectively review and collate evidence for each contributing outcome and indicator of good practice (IGP)
4. Self-assess against each contributing outcome and the relevant IGPs
5. Check your self-assessment for quality and accuracy
6. Get your self-assessment independently assured

Before you start your self-assessment, familiarise yourself with the principles and contributing outcomes, the indicators of good practice, and the CAF for local government profile.

About the self-assessment workbooks

Read a transcript of the navigating the self-assessment workbook video (.txt, 9KB).

There are 2 workbooks:

• Self-assess your organisation workbook (objectives A and D)
• Self-assess your critical systems workbook (objectives B and C)

Use the workbooks to complete your self-assessment. Each workbook includes:

• self-assessment worksheets to complete – use these to show how you meet the contributing outcomes for each objective
• the CAF for local government profile – this shows the level of achievement required for each contributing outcome
• a progress tracker – assign collaborators to each contributing outcome to help you monitor the completion of your self-assessment
• an evidence tracker template – use this to organise the evidence you gather for your independent assurer
• notes on how to interpret CAF outcomes and IGPs within your council

You can also sign in and download a worked example of how to complete the self-assessment workbook and evidence tracker.

If you are assessing more than one critical system

During scoping, you will prioritise three critical systems to consider for self-assessment. We recommend you aim to assess each of your prioritised systems, starting with the one you rated as most critical.

Once you have completed the self-assessment of a system, it is ready for assurance.

You can then download another workbook to self-assess the next prioritised system.

How to download the workbook

The self-assessment workbooks and worked examples contain the CAF profile for local government, which is classified as ‘Official-Sensitive’.

To access the documents, you need to sign in with an email address associated with a governmental body or local authority. For example, an email address that ends in gov.uk. You do not need to set up an account. Find out how your privacy is protected.

How to complete a self-assessment workbook

Contact the CAF for local government team

Email us to ask a question or share feedback.