Guidance

NOVA Functional Reference Model

This is a digital repository of leading practice to support the design of back office operations for finance, HR, grants management and commercial functions.

Documents

NOVA Functional Reference Model

Details

Introducing NOVA: striving for functional brilliance

The NOVA Functional Reference Model is a digital repository of leading practice to support the optimal design of back office operations for finance, HR, grants management and commercial functions.

NOVA provides a comprehensive future view of technology enabled functional processes and drives understanding of the integration between the different viewpoints of design and how, and who, is involved in their implementation.

NOVA provides an objective perspective rather than existing ways of working competing for ‘their’ design, supporting standardisation of functional delivery across government organisations. Using the reference model as part of your functional design process can improve consistency and dependency management, reduce cost and failure demand, and increase efficiency and user satisfaction.

The artefacts are dynamically integrated on innovative business process modelling software. Users can access these artefacts, interact with them, and view them in a variety of ways to aid comprehension. Furthermore, NOVA allows users to design and collaborate on functional processes, analyse the efficiency of designed processes, and vary those processes, to drive continuous improvements. The technology can facilitate visualisation of how a process operates, in real time, within Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Licenses are available to civil service organisations on request.

NOVA contents

Functional Process Taxonomies

Level 1 to Level 3 functional taxonomies for finance, HR, grants management and commercial functions.

Process Maps

Level 4 and Level 5 detailed process maps for over 750 process flows showing standardised, leading practice, optimised corporate processes. These are typically generic, out-of the-box corporate or functional processes tailored for government organisations’ ERP usage.

Data Dictionary

This contains priority data standards captured as ‘data items’ (relating to data entities and attributes), including business information and logic, such as: name, description and business rule, and technical information, such as: data type and format.

Business Glossary

A glossary of over 2,000 business terms and associated definitions, captured from the complete set of process maps, data standards and existing Functional Standards Common Glossary.

Key Performance Metrics

Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and Process Performance Indicators (PPI) for each Level 1 functional process with defined calculation methodologies. They are categorised into three classifications: ‘top’, ‘priority’ and ‘regular’.

Additional information

NOVA supersedes previous iterations of process and data taxonomies for the government functions in scope, ushering in a new era of standardised excellence across government entities.

For further information and inquiries, please reach out to the NOVA Support Team at NOVAsupportteam@hmtreasury.gov.uk.

Updates to this page

Published 26 July 2024

Sign up for emails or print this page