The Digital Maturity Index, a tool to help transform local governments
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Digital transformation is a long-term journey that involves very complex changes. It is a process that encompasses the technology, procedures, skills, organization, and culture of administrations. In this context, change management is essential, which includes actions such as evaluating the efficiency and effectiveness of digitization initiatives, measuring the evolution of change, identifying strengths and weaknesses, creating a culture of data. evidence-based and learn from best practices.
Why IMD is needed
Measuring is essential, but most municipalities in Catalonia are small or medium-sized (with an average of 7.000 inhabitants) and have limitations of all kinds to be able to assess their degree of digital transformation. The main difficulties are:
Very limited financial resources.
Difficulties in accessing your data.
Lack of capabilities on how to define and generate digital key indicators.
Impossibility of being able to make comparisons with other similar administrations due to difficulty in accessing data and lack of data standards.
Public workers without advanced analytical skills.
Local administrations they need a turnkey solution that allows them to evaluate their change process with minimal effort and make it easier for them to make decisions as successful as possible, to achieve their digital transformation successfully. To respond to this need, the AOC has developed theDigital Maturity Index (IMD).
What is IMD
The Digital Maturity Index assesses the level of digitization and open governance of local governments through a set of more than 30 indicators organized in three dimensions:
The availability of digital public services that allow citizens to exercise theirs digital rights.
The activity of digital services citizen processing, internal management and interoperability.
The implementation of the principles of open government: transparència, right of access, open data, accountability and participation.
The evaluation of the degree of digital maturity of the local entities of a territory is one unique and innovative initiative, both nationally and internationally. Digital governance indices developed at the regional or state level are not appropriate for evaluating data at the local level, and in addition, they are analyzes based on statistical data or surveys, while the Digital Maturity Index is based on open data.
What are the goals of the IMD
The main objectives of the Digital Maturity Index are:
Create data-based culture and in evidence to local governments.
Measuring digital transformation of a territory in order to provide rigorous information to policymakers, analysts and other international agentseressats.
Evaluatethe key indicators specific to each local body so that it can know its status, and thus facilitate decision-making for policy makers and public workers.
Identify strengths and areas for improvement of a local body compared to other similar administrations or those leading the digital transformation.
Identify theBest Practices of local administrations with excellent indicator results, and to detect those bodies that need additional support from a higher level body (county, provincial or AOC).
To value the work of local bodies leading the digital transformation in Catalonia.
How we make the IMD
The Digital Maturity Index is the result of the study continued for 10 years of the process of digitization of local bodies in Catalonia, always applying an approach of improvement with the comments of public workers and the continuous investment in the creation of a data warehouse which integrates data from different sources.
The Digital Maturity Index is based on the principles next:
Use of the open data availables.
Methodology of co-creation with experts in public management.
Open process consultation with local administrations to make amendments to available data or their methodology.
The Index is calculated on the basis of quality, objective and comparable data from 947 town councils and 41 County Councils. Les information sources are:
The analysis of municipal and county websites.
The activity associated with AOC services.
The information provided by the General State Administration.
The information provided by the local bodies themselves and application providers, which is contrasted.
In the field of Transparència, open data from the Catalan Ombudsman and Infoparticipa (UAB) are used.
In terms of infrastructure, the Digital Maturity Index is based on a sustainable methodology that does not generate any additional cost. For its elaboration, the AOC has created a data warehouse that integrates all the information of different open data sources by means of a tool ETL (extraction, transformation and load of data) and that allows the consultation and the analysis of the data by means of the system of Business intelligence of the AOC.
La methodology for remote services of the Digital Maturity Index has been co-designed with experts in public management, working collaboratively and promoting the participation of public administrations at different levels:
Coordination and cooperation of the AOC, county councils and provincial councils to support small and medium-sized local bodies.
Organization of workshops and meetings with senior public officials to review the methodology and gather ideas for improving the main indicators.
Open consultation process: the collected indicators are published openly and shared in advance with local administrations to make amendments and ensure the quality of information.
Collaborative space for proposals to improve AOC services, which includes the collection of ideas for the Digital Maturity Index.
Open Data: The raw data used to generate the Digital Maturity Index is available on the AOC’s open data platform for reuse, accountability, and specific reporting.
Conclusion
This AOC initiative takes as its reference the famous quote "What cannot be measured, cannot be improved" by Lord Kelvin, and responds to the OECD's statement: "Measure is crucial for the evidence-based policy making; it helps to identify the need for political intervention, increases accountability, and improves the evaluation of the efficiency and effectiveness of political actions ”.
With the methodology of the Digital Maturity Index local administrations have rigorous information to know their status and allows them to decide priorities to advance their digital transformation process.
Els results obtained they show the achievement of their goals:
Access to the results of the index, through a set of data and reports panel, allows the consultation of digital maturity indicators in the different profiles involved in the decision-making of a local body: political leaders, elected officials and managers public.
The Digital Maturity Index has the collaboration and is used by the Generalitat de Catalunya, Localret, Diputacions and Consells Comarcals. In the 2020 edition it has reached a total of 5.000 visits.
The evaluation of this index provides objective improvement results. The Digital Maturity Index has increased by 8 points since last year; in 2020, the average index was 59 and the previous year was 51. It should be noted that the use of digital services has tripled, mainly due to the pandemic. And satisfaction with the use of digital utilities has increased 2 points over previous years.
The publication of the index has increased by 10% the number of requests from local bodies requesting support and advice from the AOC to improve their digital administration and open government initiatives.
Each year, the AOC awards the Open Administration Awards to the leading administrationseres in digital transformation, divided into seven categories. In the 2020 edition, 76 local entities were awarded. And more than 1.000 people followed the virtual event of the presentation of the 2020 Awards.
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