Digital tools for managing the strategic objectives of the Unione Bassa Reggiana

Challenge

The Unione Bassa Reggiana has collaborated with EROI, the Emilia-Romagna Region's Open Innovation platform, to enhance its internal management tools and increase its ability to achieve the Organisation's strategic objectives.

The Unione carries out important strategic planning activities that are realized in various documents, such as the Integrated Plan of Activities and Organization (PIAO), the Single Programming Document (DUP), the Executive Management Plan (PEG), and the Local Digital Agenda.

These are complex and very extensive documents that regulate the activities of the entities, establishing macro-objectives, actions, resources, initiatives, service enhancements, and problem solutions. They therefore identify fundamental and central aspects for the life of the citizenry.

The volume of these documents, the scope of the expected impacts, and the interconnections between the various organizational functions involved in their implementation make their consultation for monitoring purposes very complex.

The Unione has set itself the goal of innovating its approach to strategic planning activities, integrating the contents of key documents with management and control, monitoring, and accountability systems. The ambitious challenge is to implement an objective-based management of the entity, capable of providing quickly, up-to-date and efficiently indicators such as: progress status, resources used and resources still available, improvements or critical issues compared to previous performance, statistics, indicators, and other useful information.

Solution

The Unione turned to the EROI platform to meet with various stakeholders ready to offer solutions. The engagement process with the community of innovators on EROI involved the following steps:

• publication of a Challenge by the Unione on the EROI platform
• promotion of the Challenge by the EROI, ER2Digit and ART-ER network
• collection of solutions proposed by the EROI community
• organization of 1-1 meetings between the Unione and solution proposers

The mediation of EROI allowed the Unione to meet highly specialized technicians in the field of digital management tools, with whom possible lines of work and related feasibility were outlined. The stakeholders presented various proposals to frame the key points of the solution:

• delineate the sets of information available
• map the current tools in use by the entity
• define the information objectives
• clarify the needs of data visualization
• define the reference indicators
• map the types of users and their permissions

Results

Thanks to EROI's open innovation process, the Unione Bassa Reggiana has evaluated several proposals to develop a data dashboard that ensures a detailed and up-to-date knowledge of the entity and its activities, also allowing to improve processes and services provided.

Furthermore, the Unione has discussed, together with the entities that responded to the EROI Challenge, the possibility of activating automation and artificial intelligence solutions for integration with other data sources from IoT sensors distributed throughout the territory.

Information

Find out your nearest EDIH and learn more about ER2Digit service catalogue for Public Sector Organisations and SMEs located in Emilia-Romagna.

Photo: Terre di Po e dei Gonzaga