How can we, as a municipality, improve the quality of our operational management? How do we increase the trust of citizens and companies in the public administration? How can we create cost savings? A medium-sized municipality in the middle of the country was confronted with these complex questions. It was not possible to provide answers at once. However, a factor that may make a significant contribution to answering these questions is the information service of the organisation.

Together with the municipality in question Aranea has drawn up a business case and organisation blueprint in order to show the contribution of an improved organisation and management of the information service, as well as a way organising this.

Approach.

The steps that have been followed can be outlined as follows:

• Assessing the current situation regarding the use and organisation of information services within the municipality;
• Developing ideas about the information service within the municipality;
• Establishing municipal objectives to which an improved information service may make a contribution;
• Proposing measures/projects in order to realise the objectives and draw up a business case for these measures/projects;
• Proposing an organisational blueprint for the information service. Background.

In the current situation the organisation was controlled by the phenomenon of integral management! It was expected of each manager that he/she would have control over the PIOF spectrum (Personnel, Information, Organisation and Personnel) in order to implement the tasks of his/her department. Separate departments were organised For Finance and Personnel in order to offer advice, whereby Finance in particular was used as a strategic means to manage the organisation.

There are none such departments for Information and Organisation. They are not used as strategic instruments. They do not play a significant role in the organisation and its objectives. Many aspects of PIOF can be found in the organisation and were insufficiently related to each other on management levels. However, in order to realise the mutual relationship between the PIOF domains, it was proposed to embed the information service on a strategic and tactical management level and manage them on this basis in a central way. The role of Information Management is essential in this respect. On the basis of this an information policy and information architecture was drawn up on a broad municipal level, on the basis of which the further proposed improvement measures were tested, coordinated and organised within the I-domain.

The proposed improvement measures can make a substantial contribution to the objectives of the municipality: a greater and better integral and interactive cooperation, avoiding a lack of engagement and structural savings on the operational management costs.

The proposed improvement measures mean that:

• The annual operational management costs can be reduced substantially in the next four years by organising a good information service.
• The service to citizens is increased through shorter lead times of requests/questions, broader “opening hours”, a more extensive service through the internet and less mistakes in the service because data are more reliable.
• Furthermore, a good information service means a better transparency and controllability of the operational management, because (executive) operational processes can be understood from beginning to end and can be adjusted quickly and specifically in the event of any bottlenecks.
• The current “islands” of automation are linked to municipality-wide information systems, whereby there are no duplications anymore in applications, data and documents. Furthermore, the data and documents are available digitally on a broad municipal level in this situation. This means that less time has to be spent on retrieving, processing and transferring data and documents, and that the total processing time and lead time of the operational processes is reduced.

Result.

The management of the Municipality has recognised the (strategic) importance and possible contribution of the information service and decided to regard the I-domain as a strategic and tactical control instrument. For this purpose the function of information management was set up. The task of the Information Manager is to further organise and elaborate the I-domain and manage the proposed improvement measures in the field of the information service.