Caf good practice database

Diputación Provincial de Soria

SPAIN
28/07/yyyy

The questions under each heading are meant to help/inspire you. Please focus on the
remarks relevant to of your case/good practice.

Title of presentation. Our first steps.

Author: Guillermo Yáñez Sánchez. Email: guillermoyane@gmail.com;

secretaria@dipsoria.es.

A short description of the organization or organizations where the good practice

has been applied.

The best practice has been carried out in the Soria Country Council.

The Spanish State is made up of over 8.000 municipalities, grouped in 50 provinces

which, in turn, are divided into 17 autonomous regions. The Province of Soria consists of
183 municipalities and has a population of 93,503 (2006).

Under the present Spanish legal system, a province is an organization consisting of a

group of municipalities. Its role is to ensure that the principles of solidarity and equilibrium
among municipalities are to be found in the area of economic and social policies. In
particular:

1. To ensure the complete and adequate distribution of the services which are the
responsibility of the municipal governments, throughout the whole province.

2. To participate in the coordination of the local governments with the regional and
central administrations.

The Soria Country Council is directly responsible for the government and the
administration of the Province of Soria. It employs more than 500 people and has a budget of
65 million euros (2007).

The best practice has been undertaken by the Contracting and Assets Unit of the
Country Council.

This unit is responsible for providing the goods and services that other internal
departments need to carry out their activities, and also for preserving and managing the
assets of the Country Council. At present, this Unit has four employees.

Description of the case/good practice.Summary:

Since 2001, the members of the Unit has been voluntarily involved in management
improvement of their business practices. The starting point was the discovery of a
technological solution (which we later found out was known as workflow software) for
handling the processing of documents. At the time this solution was out of service.

Over these years our work has been guided by the principles of Total Quality
Management using tools such as CAF and BPM (Common Assessment Framework and the
Business Process Management).

The best practice developed could be linked to the following criteria of the CAF 2002:

2.- Strategy and planning.

4.5.- Manages technology.
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Diputación Provincial de Soria
SPAIN
28/07/yyyy

5.- Process and change management.

Reasons & aims:

The reasons for undertaking the best practice can be found in the poor performance
of the Unit; very long processing periods; non-compliance with legally established
procedures; mistakes, duplications and lack of coordination…

The principle goals pursued by the introduction of the best practice have been:

1. An increase in the efficiency of the Unit because we were able to identify our
clients, that it to say the receptors or beneficiaries of our products and services
and from then on work for them.
2. An increase in the effectiveness of the Unit by means of process management:
decreasing processing time, eliminating errors and duplications.
3. An improvement in information management by using the appropriate
technological tools for the tasks. This technology, workflow software, is also
suitable for networking.
4. The development and implementation of rational and logical management system.
We have planned what we are going to do and we are currently carrying it out (or
trying to) it; we will revise what we have achieved and will take the necessary
measures to improve the results.
Now we know if we don’t respect this protocol, if we act without evaluation
and reflections, if we don’t weigh up the benefits and disadvantages, if we don’t
dispose of the necessary means and we don’t respect the plan in course: things
will go wrong. We can quote Herodotus the strategist of the Battle of Salamina:
“When humans come up with rational plans, in general these can be carried out.
But when the plans are unreasonable not even God can favours human
decisions”.

Implementation:

The existence in 2001 of the appropriate technology for the electronic management of
records was the starting point for the best practice. The training, participation and
motivation of the Unit members has allowed us to implement the improvements (the
identification, description and documentation of our key processes integrating them into the
workflow software; self-evaluation using CAF 2002 and strategic planning).

Although the best practice originally arose voluntarily and spontaneously, recently
the Section head had led the changes involving both the workers of the Unit and the
members of the IT Department.

Our initial activities to improve our processes were carried out without any
methodology.

We have been using CAF and BPM to improve the performance of the Unit. We chose
BPM because we have had the appropriate technology for this tool since 1992.

After using CAF for a few years, we realized that if we wanted to ensure success of
our BPM initiatives, we would need BMP methodology. We needed and still need a protocol,
a series of steps, which if followed would ensure a dramatic and successful improvement in
our results.

Apart from some courses in the computer language used by our BPM technology (an
IBM product called Lotus Notes), all activities have been carried out by ourselves.

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Diputación Provincial de Soria
SPAIN
28/07/yyyy

What have been the most important results of the case/good practice?

In the initial phase, we managed to improve our “key performance results”, (as we
later discovered they were called by the ninth criteria of CAF 2002). We have managed to:

1. Enhance business performance by 89% in two years.

2. Improve publicity and competition, factors that the public sector should always
comply when contracting goods and services passing from an average of 2.41 to
3.45 offers for each invitation for tenders.
3. Increase the number of tenders received from 1.36 to 1.60 in each bidding
process.
4. Ensure the compliance with established legal procedures in the case of most
sought after demands for goods and services.
5. Improve technological management so that the key process have been designed
and implemented within a suitable technological solution (workflow software) that
allows the “automation” of business procedures or workflows by which
documents, tasks and information pass from one participant to another in an
orderly fashion governed by rules or procedures.
6. Make part of the knowledge that we have acquired about process improvement
and implementation of process an essential part of our Unit by documenting,
clearly describing and sharing said Knowledge.
7. Create a networking procedure using BPM and suitable new technologies. The
technology allows movement of information between management, support and
governing body thus facilitating the decision-making process. We have closed a
first circle where the information on record is integrated into the IT system and
available to all the interested parties in a single data-base.

In 2005 we carried out our first self-evaluation using a Total Quality Management
tool (CAF). Thus we could:

1. Understand what a quality management tool such as CAF is.

2. Carry out an evaluation of the organization’s performance.
3. Identify our strengths and areas for improvement. There were organised work
processes, but also paper was used to document various processes on different
programs: Lotus Notes, word, excel, access, Velázquez,…) It was a mess!!.
4. Analyze all the information, problems and possible solutions.
5. Pinpoint areas of action in order to introduce improvements:
• Where to start.
• How to start.
• How to ensure success
• What we need to start.
6. Create a roadmap and timeframe to improve our performance once we had
analysed the aspects of point five above.

We have come across the following obstacles:

1. We haven’t known how to ensure executive sponsorship and without a top

sponsor a range of problems have arisen. We also need to persuade executive
management that management tools, like CAF or BPM, can help them to achieve
their goals. However, the feeling that we need to use these tools to modernize our
performance is slowly growing.
2. We haven’t known how to involve people from all the key areas.
3. Further more, the people involved in the improvement process effort do not have
the right skills. We need to require these skills.

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Diputación Provincial de Soria
SPAIN
28/07/yyyy

4. The culture of our organization is one that is closed and resistant to change.
5. Despite the fact that we have achieved some of our objectives, it has been done
without a plan and efforts to improve procedures are some of the more important
challenges any organization can face. We have done new things, but have they
been done well? We don’t know.
6. We haven´t been able to count on a management project, or a project manager or
a work methodology.

Our main success factors have been:

1. People: We have gathered together a group of people with different qualities such
as initiative, creativity, curiosity and above all a desire to change the traditional
way of doing things.
2. Technology: As we said previously, our improvement activities began with a
technology which was out of service. We know that our performance depends
directly on the technological tools we use.
It is extremely important to count on the appropriate tools. We now know
that even though the right technology can’t guarantee success, the wrong one can
guarantee failure.
Technology allows us to do more things and get them done faster and
easier. But, if we want to enjoy all the advantages of technology, we will have to
use the right tools that will help us ensure success project and avoid mistakes.

Innovate nature and transferability of the case/ good practice.

In the area of the Soria Country Council, this best practice is somewhat new because
the Unit (Contracting and Assets) that has improved its work processes using a technological
solution is the only one to do so. Besides it is the only section which is working with CAF to
check and improve results.

In 2004, after working three years in operation, the best practice won first prize in the
Public Service Quality and Modernization Award in the Autonomous Region of Castilla y
León.

At the same time, the Spanish Ministery of Public Administration, aware of the fact
that knowledge management and creation is a priority for local governments, and that in
order to share experiences communication net-works are essential, included this best
practice developed by the Soria Country Council in the Local Government Management
Practices Bank.

Recently the latest in technology - an SOA – was acquired. An SOA is a services

oriented architecture is a technological system that allows organizations to be more agile and
adaptable and to develop their applications more rapidly by easily connecting services by
means of the components of the applications.

If we knew how an SOA worked, we would be able to do more things and do them
better and faster. But we don’t know. We only know that implanting an SOA requires
significant changes in the way our organization carries out its work. It requires closer
collaboration between business units, IT architecture, infrastructure managers and project
teams…

How can we achieve this? We have to keep on working and use the right tools like
BPM and CAF.

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 Caf good practice database
Diputación Provincial de Soria
SPAIN
28/07/yyyy

The best practice developed by our Unit will be able to serve as a guide for those
organisations which are just beginning to improve their management through the use of
technology and quality and process management tools.