Piedmont Local Alliances for Innovation Network (PLAIN)

The Piedmont Local Alliances for Innovation (ALI-Alleanze Locali per l'Innovazione), also known as Territorial Services Centres (CST-Centri Servizi Territoriali), set up a regional network of 8 provincial centres launched to foster the inclusion of small municipalities in the innovation processes and the diffusion of e-government solutions. PLAIN concerns municipalities with less than 5,000 inhabitants and its main goals are the simplification of the joint management of e-government services and ICT resources, e-government good practice dissemination, vocational training. The initiative has allowed the re-use of know-how and investments made by Piedmont Region, Provinces and larger towns.

Policy Context

The policy context where the PLAIN initiative was started is strictly connected to the national guidelines for ICT development and the European e-government strategy. In 2000 the first national “e-government Action Plan” defined Italian national engagement for the eEurope goals. The 2000 Italian e-government plan identified for both Regions and the local public bodies the key role to care for the development of infrastructures, services, application cooperation and data provision. This resulted in the Government co-financing of e-government projects carried out in all the Italian regions: among these the implementation of Territorial Services Centres or Local Alliances for Innovation (LAI). The second phase of the e-government national plan aimed to spread the results of the first e-government programme; among others, two national budgetlines were implemented to promote and disseminate first-phase projects like the LAI initiative and the “re-use” of e-government solutions. At a local level, the PLAIN initiative contributed to the regional strategy for the reduction of digital divide. Small municipalities, in fact, representing 90% of the Piemontese territory, are mainly located in the mountain areas and are affected by a general lack of infrastructures, depopulation and loss of economic initiatives. The Piedmont Regional administration thus decided to invest and provide those areas with a broadband infrastructure, using wi-fi technologies when necessary; the technological infrastructure, which will be completed in 2008, is the basic requirement to supply online services, providing direct benefits to citizens and enhancing the settlement of new enterprises. Finlayy PLAIN supports the third priority of i2010, aiming at promoting an inclusive European Information Society, supported by efficient and user-friendly ICT enabled public services. Within this context PLAIN stimulates the exchange of good practice and cooperation between administrations at local levels, thus accelerating adoption and bringing savings by re-using proven concepts and solutions.

Description of target users and groups

The target group of the PLAIN initiative are Piedmontese small municipalities, i.e. municipalities with less than 5,000 inhabitants. The Local Alliances for Innovation (LAI) are organised on a provincial basis, so that each of the eight Piemontese Provinces co-ordinates the municipalities of its own territory: today 1,070 municipalities are involved (88,7% of the total regional municipalities, 93% of the regional small towns), corresponding to 2,205,975 inhabitants (nearly half of the regional population). LAI are negotianting tables where small municipalities can express their needs and access the know-how of larger public administrations, in order to foster specific e-government projects on their territory. This initiative sets out a re-organization of the regional policy-making process, allowing recognition of small public bodies needs in a bottom-up approach. The actual implementation of the specific solutions requested by small local bodies is made possible thanks to Regional financing. The final target of the solution chosen by the small municipalities varies, depending on the kind of services selected: administration-to-administration or administration-to-citizens solutions. Through this strategic planning small municipalities obtained the dissemination of online services for citizens, developed in the previous years by larger Piemontese public administrations; whereas today they are likely to adopt a new cadastral data management system, developed by the Emilia Romagna Region. The added value of this exchange and re-use of best practices is the creation of regional standard solutions, which grant a deeper impact on the final users: according to this policy, in fact, the citizens of the region will be able to access the same service on the whole regional territory, notwithstanding the municipality of residence. At the moment, more than 600 municipalities have requested the availability of regional services online for citizens, and a similar amount of municipalities have asked for the cadastral management system.

Description of the way to implement the initiative

The organizational model and the management approach are innovative as the project, implemented according to a network model consisting of eight ALIs, one for each province of the regional territory, promotes the efficiency of the technological tools managed. In order to smooth the relationship with the ICT providers of the small municipalities, even though there is not a real partnership, CSI-Piemonte (as network managing body) works to facilitate the collaboration of small municipalities with private local providers in the use of ICT solutions and services, offering its support and know-how for the preliminary selection of proposals, the negotiation of contracts and the monitoring of prices. The added value that can be reached through a joint management approach of ICT services is a useful instrument to overcome barriers. CSI-Piemonte (management partner) www.csipiemonte.it Multi-channel issues: The organizational methodology for the dissemination of the services concerned is mainly of the type “face to face delivery”. The penetration and allocation strategy over the territory, to support the small municipalities, privileges direct interventions of staff on site who can ensure supporting, training and information activities. Moreover, following a direct relationship approach, specific training courses have been organized for representatives of the municipalities.

Main results, benefits and impacts

LAIs have a significant impact in terms of simplification of the access to the benefits of the digital administration for both citizens and enterprises. Moreover, they make it possible to increase competences through consultancy, that makes it easier to transfer ICT know-how, as well as the cooperation with subjects that own the technological knowledge, with a view to reach an optimum dimension to create scale economies. The impact of the initiative on the territory is considerable: out of the 1,206 Piedmont municipalities addressed to, today 1,070 municipalities throughout the region are involved in the territorial service centres, of which 1,007 with less than 5,000 inhabitants, amounting to a population of 1,198,305 inhabitants. The basis of the LAIs organizational model is ensured by the accessibility and integration criteria, as well as by the information exchange, to guarantee citizens’ access to the public administration as such, and the exchange of information among public bodies. CSI-Piemonte, as network manager, contributed to the success of the initiative, thus making it superfluous to create eight ad hoc legal entities to be charged with the implementation of the operational activities, and making it possible to save a considerable amount of financial resources. Innovation: The policy-making process in Piedmont has usually followed a top-down evolution: the Regional administration owned the economical resources, made the strategic planning and decided upon the kind of interventions that could be useful for the development of the territory. In the past, dealing mainly with the implementation of the fundamental technological infrastructures, the involvement of small municipalities was not considered as strategic. Recently, the completion of the physical and logical supply has pointed out the need to specify the provision of final services, thus requiring: - a recognition of the needs of small municipalities; - a solution to simplify the use of online services by small public bodies. The PLAIN initiative answers both those issues, on one side, by allowing small municipalities to give evidence of their needs and problems and, on the other, by helping a shared management of the services. At a national level, the Piemontese experience is one of the most significant, considering its efficiency (it does not create a new administrative level yet simplifies the connection among the existing levels) and the number of the overall municipalities involved

Return on investment

Return on investment: Not applicable / Not available

Track record of sharing

The PLAIN initiative is basically an organizational revision process. It builds up a communication channel from and towards small municipalities. In Italy, almost every Region has started a LAI initiative so it would have been of no use to foster the dissemination of such an initiative at national level, though the conditions of development of such services are different according to the regional background: sometimes, in fact, LAIs are public companies which have to bear the organizational costs of the structure. On the contrary, the share of experiences with other European public administrations will be encouraged, especially as regards the organisational model of inclusion of small municipalities in the innovation processes. In this case, after an analysis of the formal decision process adopted in a specific administrative context, a proper communication action will be organized in oder to inform small public bodies of the opportunity given. After having obtained the agreement of the small municipalities, it would then be necessary to deliver some concrete results (co-financing of local projects, provisioning of services and so on) in a short time, to strengthen the trust in the outlined management system. In the frame of a national initiative, PLAIN has been promoted during a PA innovation exhibit (Marina di Carrara, Italy, November 16 2005 , “Dire & Fare: Rassegna dell’innovazione nella pubblica amministrazione”, www.nuovistrumenti.it/arretrati/dwd_arretrati/NS_072005.pdf ). The project has been also promoted at national level through the Italian portal Forum PA (http://www.forumpa.it/archivio/3000/3200/3260/3266/simonatocst-veloci.h…)

Lessons learnt

The lessons that can be learnt from the PLAIN experience are the following: - e-government initiatives call for a critical dimension of the indirect beneficiary (public body) in order to succeed; for this reason joint management is strongly advisable when dealing with small municipalities; - inter-institutional cooperation has to be pursued right from the very definition of e-government objectives, in order to take into account both high level political goals and the needs of the final users. Subsidiarity criteria should be considered also in the decision-making process; - private stakeholders have to be involved in the policy-making process: public-private partnerships have to be considered to leverage local expertise and achieve greater benefits. Scope: Local (city or municipality), Regional (sub-national)