THE STARTING POINT
A tool to accompany RGS on the path to innovation
The i-Lab project was created to provide a tool to accompany RGS along the path of innovation with the introduction of new methodologies, new models of collective participation and new operating practices.
In recent years RGS has expressed the need to renew its mission to serve the community, and has opened up to new stakeholders, evolving the overall quality of its services.
In order to guarantee solutions capable of meeting the expectations and needs of its stakeholders, RGS has created a new methodological device that supports the most modern efficiency and standardisation challenges, with an awareness of the characteristics of the historical moment and aligning itself with the development of technologies.
The path taken was to create an operational framework that allows stakeholders to discuss and devise within large, structured thematic tables. Its objective is, in fact, to steer and implement major transformation programmes in the Central Public Administration.
The evolution towards a model based on participatory confrontation, which characterises the strategic direction of the new RGS, has had the effect of renewing and strengthening the participation of the RGS people involved with the contribution provided by new figures who have joined the Ragioneria in the last 3 years.
THE STARTING POINT
A tool to accompany RGS on the path to innovation
The i-Lab project was created to provide a tool to accompany RGS along the path of innovation with the introduction of new methodologies, new models of collective participation and new operating practices.
In recent years RGS has expressed the need to renew its mission to serve the community, and has opened up to new stakeholders, evolving the overall quality of its services.
In order to guarantee solutions capable of meeting the expectations and needs of its stakeholders, RGS has created a new methodological device that supports the most modern efficiency and standardisation challenges, with an awareness of the characteristics of the historical moment and aligning itself with the development of technologies.
The path taken was to create an operational framework that allows stakeholders to discuss and devise within large, structured thematic tables. Its objective is, in fact, to steer and implement major transformation programmes in the Central Public Administration.
The evolution towards a model based on participatory confrontation, which characterises the strategic direction of the new RGS, has had the effect of renewing and strengthening the participation of the RGS people involved with the contribution provided by new figures who have joined the Ragioneria in the last 3 years.
THE STRATEGY
i-Lab, Innovation Laboratory
i-Lab is a laboratory for training, testing and applying methodologies, practices and tools to support the development of innovative solutions. The project involves multidisciplinary teams, made up of people whose heterogeneous and converging skills help to identify and test new solutions. The objective of i-Lab is to create new service models that respond to the emerging needs expressed by users.
By its very nature i-Lab is a centrifuge of ideas, approaches and methodologies. This Programme is characterised by flexibility and the ability to adapt the tools according to the specific need to be met. i-Lab provides a specific framework with which sessions, methodologies, participation models are organised, supported by handouts, contributions, handouts and bibliographies. In this way, the Programme guarantees an effectiveness tailored to the needs of the context.
The context is in fact wide and heterogeneous, consisting of Inspectorates and RGS Offices, numerous subjects of the Central Public Administration, managers and technical referents of Sogei and, finally, the vast supply sector.
From the effects point of view, i-Lab synthesises the best of the experiences on the market for the specificities of the IGIT context, under three aspects:
- as a Programme, as it focuses on the culture of application and experimentation in the field;
- as an Accelerator, because it provides a model that anticipates results by showing a range of possible opportunities;
- as a Course, because it has the ambition to train participants in ‘Lean’ and ‘Beneficiary Discovery’ methodologies.
These different configurations of i-Lab were developed on four different wide-impact applications, each with its own scope and purpose.
I-LAB 1.0
Service Catalogue
Discover, investigate and experiment
The first application of i-Lab lasted about 79 days during which 31 people, organised in 3 different teams, discussed specific services, provided new project ideas and proposed a complete restructuring of the RGS Service Catalogue model.
The programme involved 18 Public Administrations, both national and locals, as well as 23 of their respective offices and departments.
Highlights
The aim of the first i-Lab Programme was to create new service models for Anagrafe Enti, Bilanci armonizzati and Piattaforma dei Crediti Commerciali. Specifically, Anagrafe Enti is the service that allows the unambiguous identification of public bodies through a centralised registry. Bilanci Armonizzati (Harmonised Financial Statements) is the service for processing the Financial Statements of Entities based on data in Open format, and the Piattaforma Crediti Commerciali (Trade Receivables Platform) is the service that MEF provides to local administrations to certify credit with the PA to private companies.
I-LAB 2.0
Physical Asset Management, Datawarehouse and Management Reporting
A common requirement, a common benefit
The implementation of i-Lab 2.0, which included two releases, lasted about 69 days. During this time, some 89 people, organised in 5 different teams, confronted each other and generated new proposals for the development of the Gestione Fisica dei beni and Datawarehouse branches, the management reporting within the structure of the InIt Platform, the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) type system, which is being implemented to integrate the flows and processes of financial, economic and capital accounting and analytical accounting of the State.
The programme involved 10 Public Administrations, both national and locals, as well as 32 of their respective offices and departments.
Highlights
In this second application, i-Lab extends its business support capacity to redefine the organisational models, administrative processes and operational procedures that underpin the Administration. becoming a methodological tool in its own right.
The i-Lab Programme envisaged multidisciplinary teams working on the definition of the user requirement and the design of the processes supporting the above-mentioned InIt releases, thanks to the coming together of functions, skills, knowledge and cultures of vast sectors of the Central Public Administration.
I-LAB 3.0
InIt
The implementation of i-Lab 3.0, which started in 2021 and is still ongoing, has so far involved 268 people who, organised in 30 different teams, have been exchanging ideas and generating new proposals for the development of the InIt Platform activities.
The programme has so far involved 16 Public Administrations, both national and locals, as well as 50 of their respective offices and departments.
Highlights
The scale of the intervention, considering the breadth, richness and heterogeneity of the audience involved, makes the i-Lab 3.0 Programme unique among Central Public Administration initiatives. The scope of the project necessitated the application of i-Lab so that entire and articulated processes could be redesigned in a coordinated manner, thanks to the involvement and feedback of users and stakeholders affected by the change, who were called upon to manage a different impact along a path made up of meetings, sessions and decision-making steps.
The convergence towards a common, concrete, uniform and implementable vision was possible through the application of user requirement definition methodologies. These methodologies supported the teams to work in parallel and on interconnected topics, enabling a simplified harmonisation through taxonomic solutions and classification of data, contributions and information, related in a governed design.
CHANGES AND BENEFITS
Due to their scope, the impacts and benefits of the i-Lab application within the State General Accounting Office generate effects in different areas
The benefits concern first of all the quality of the solutions, because the application of the Programme leads to the definition of more effective solutions through a more structured production process and an organisational model functional to an agile management of conception workflows. i-Lab is a tool to support the development of relationships, thanks to the creation of thematic working tables where to meet and discuss. It brings improvements in time management and fosters a cultural change centred on the emergence of horizontal and non-hierarchical contribution models: as a participatory programme, i-Lab enhances cues, ideas and indications because it focuses on the qualities of people. Within this virtuous context, the benefits culminate in a higher return on investment (ROI), because in general the Programme improves the management efficiency of resources.
In its various modalities, i-Lab has generated positive impacts in various aspects: the Programme enables the development of new service models, converts innovation programmes into strategic projects, generates benefits from an organisational and goal alignment perspective, builds a knowledge management model, facilitates compliance with roadmaps and encourages cross-programme participation within the Institution.
Experience of change
i-Lab represents a turning point for RGS, confirming a fundamental paradigm in our vision of Design: change processes are possible and produce real effects only when methodological tools are fully embedded in the context.
i-Lab is a value-based tool that is concretely applied in organisational, process and service solutions, defining a new, more participatory identity for RGS. From its first application, this method replaces individual efforts with collective ones, ordering and directing them. The cultures and different souls involved in the administration no longer play a role of mere support to project development, but become its heart.
With i-Lab, a new culture of doing and planning in practice is born, to build a common identity as digital interlocutors in the process of modernising the country’s public accounting and finance.