The V Transnational Innovato-R Meeting in Porto

The V Transnational Innovato-R Meeting took place in Porto, Portugal, from 28 to 30 October 2020 in a virtual format due to the measures adopted throughout Europe to prevent the Covid-19 pandemic.

The transnational meetings have been organized to monitor the project achievements, the consistency of the results produced with the initial expectations, the planning of future activities and deadlines and for addressing and solving possible issues and take consequent appropriate decisions. 

Partners exchanged knowledge and experience through thematic workshops and conferences to produce joint outputs and feed their local action plans.

Representatives from Turin, Italy (Lead Partner), Porto, Portugal, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, Murcia, Spain, Rotterdam, Netherlands, Veszprém, Hungary, and Métropole du Grand Paris, France participated in videoconference.

All sessions were moderated by Fabio Sgaragli, Lead expert of Innovato-R. 

The welcome session was opened by Catarina Araújo, Porto HR Councilor, and hosted by Fabrizio Barbiero, Innovato-R Project Manager and Pietro Elisei, Ad Hoc Expert. 

The first day continued with the Innovato-R Sprint Retrospective, a participatory retrospective moment involving all the Innovato-R partners and participants. 

An interactive digital whiteboard was proposed by the Porto organizers, on which all participants could write down suggestions and comments. It was a very engaging activity, during which many ideas were shared.

The second day began with the Innovato-R winners’ pitches: project presentations by one team per partner, facilitated by Fabio Sgaragli and Pietro Elisei.

Cluj-Napoca presented a project of digitalization of the process of monthly payslips, creating an automatic system that allows push of data in a already existing individual account, that all employees of the Municipality have. 

The proposal of the speaker, Horatiu Pop, was already implemented in the last two months in the Municipality (“What a simple idea and what a big difference it makes”).  

The Innovato-R winners' pitches of Métropole du Grand Paris was about the “Civil servant digital training”, with the challenge to prepare local municipalities to tackle digital issue. 

The Global Digital Training program had to be addressed specifically each level of a local municipality. Agents, who are in direct contact with citizens (need Digital skills), Middle management, from citizen relation departments or involved in digitalization processes (Digital team management issue), and Top management (Digital strategies). All have to share knowledge about Digital issue. Very important it was that stakeholders were included in the digital training process. 

Murcia's winners' pitches presentation was related to the level of second interaction with Local Police. 62 proposals received, 24 were duplicated, 38 considered. Some of the proposals were rejected from the outset, due to their elevated cost. An exercize to shortlist actions considered Intense debate, Predominant Factors such as Cost, Time-span, Complexity, Consensus and motivation.

Porto Innovato-R Team asked themselves: “How can we improve and adapt our current workflow procedures in a faster, transversal and simpler way, among Municipal Teams?”.

And proposed solutions were: Facilitator's Role, with HR investment, Employee's Portal, with Technological investment and HR investment, and a Best Practices Manual, with HR investment. That means an internal alliances and synergies among municipal services.

Rotterdam presented a Digital innovation platform to share ideas among all innovators, in the form of a big ecosystem with an integral approach.

The Innovato-R winners' pitches of Turin was presented by Fulvia Mantino, who described a project on social services and inclusion of the City of Turin.

The project focuses on rethinking the spaces of the service headquarters, trying to overcome any feeling of exclusion and creating a real pole of social inclusion.

To do this: “We must start by rethinking the identity and communication of the service itself. It is essential to communicate transparency, humanization, informality of the service and at the same time create greater involvement among those who use the service”.

To improve the image of the premises, it was decided to work mainly on the access doors of the main office.

Last but not least, Veszprém.

Agnes Torok, of the City of Veszprém, experimented on herself the negative effect of sedentary work. So, she had the idea to propose an innovative project of “Gym in workplace”.

“If someone works continuously for 8 hours it causes so many problems”, said Agnes Torok. Her innovative proposed solution was to create a gym at workplaces, design an exercise plan safe for everyone, followed with an open, flexible and supportive attitude of the leadership.

“A gym where to go not in a specific time of the day, but with the possibility to go when someone needs, during working hours, booking in advance with a digital booking system, for 20 minutes activity for day”, concluded Torok.

The second morning was closed by the Innovato-R Talks Fireside, chat with Philipe Araújo, Vice Mayor of Porto, and Rui Coutinho, PBS.

The last day, October 30th, was dedicated to the Innovato-R Internal Meeting.

The morning began with a game proposed by the City of Porto on the knowledge, by the other partners, of the Portuguese town.

Each partner city was then asked to take stock of the situation, both on the projects and on the current management of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

The City of Murcia highlighted the end of the second cycle of the Innovato-R project. Contagion from Covid-19 in the Spanish town is low, but a lockdown has been imposed which does not allow, without specific reasons, to move outside the city. Most of the work activities, in particular of the public administration, are managed online, with employees in smart working. The schools are open.

Métropole du Grand Paris is in lockdown for at least the entire month of November, with schools open. All meetings are online. Since the administrative elections have been postponed, the current council in office is at the end of the mandate and therefore does not take programmatic decisions, if not of an urgent and ordinary administration nature. There is therefore a stalemate in decision-making.

From the point of view of Innovato-R projects, four were selected. Two of which concern digital. One is a training program on digital inclusion. The other is on the transfer of information between two different administrative levels of the Métropole du Grand Paris

The training program on digital inclusion will start at the beginning of 2021. The other is stopped due to the surplus work of the IT department to solve the problems related to the smart working of public employees.

Cluj-Napoca is in a critical situation of contagion from Covid-19. Schools are closed, but no other type of lockdown has been put in place. The public administration continues to work within its offices.

However, it was not possible to organize physical meetings relating to the Innovato-R projects for fear of contagion and the project budget had to be reviewed, which included an important part linked to international travel, which could not be carried out.

The focus was on making videos and materials to support innovations at the local level.

In Veszprém, the contagion from Covid-19 is constantly increasing. For the moment there is only the closing of pubs and restaurants every evening at 11 pm, but further lockdown measures are expected.

Since February 2020 it has been possible to hold two meetings on innovation projects, the preparation goes on anyway.

In Porto, 99% of public administration activities have been online since February 2020, with a surplus of work especially in Human Resources, which has created a slowdown in Innovato-R projects. A digital agenda has been marked on the progress of innovation projects and on what has been done and remains to be done.

Rotterdam has a semi-lockdown situation. Pubs and restaurants are closed, no alcohol is sold after 8pm, no big events take place.

Smart working however works very well, with tools and technologies provided to public employees by the municipal administration.

The community of innovators frequently meets online, with workshops, lectures, meetings, etc ... and there is the sharing of ideas and work progress on a specially created digital platform.

In Turin, public servants are mainly working in smart working, with a situation linked to Covid-19 in constant change due to the growth of the contagion.

The situation has created delays in some projects. The aim is to ensure that innovation is a permanent practice in the Public Administration and create a community of innovators within the city.

Here are some slides from the presentation by Oriana Spanò, from the City of  Turin.

The meeting had a final part relating to financial and administrative issues.

The conclusions were entrusted to Fabrizio Barbiero of the City of Turin: “Turin will host the final meeting at the end of May 2021, which we hope will take place physically. We want to invite not only the representatives of the partner cities, but also politicians and EU members of Urbact to give maximum visibility to our projects and share the results and we hope to be able to do it in person and not digitally, which is why it has been scheduled for the end of May 2021”.

Much appreciated by all the participants was the shared digital space created by Porto and named “Booths” in which it was possible to upload videos and other material for sharing among all the partner cities.