Make Strategy Work – Planning Process & Platform - Observatory of Public Sector Innovation

Strategic planning has turned into bureaucracy circus, without really moving the needle. The City of Ashdod has pioneered a new strategic planning model, in collaboration with Insights.Us. The new methodology enables city leadership to define key measurable outcomes, harnessing cross-silos action plans. The digital platform was designed to celebrate success stories, and connect the community, allowing an inclusive whole-of-city approach.

Innovation Summary

Innovation Overview

We have partnered with Insights.us to revolutionize the way the public sector plans ahead – and connects the community to its strategy. The standard process of planning has become obsolete – over complicated spreadsheets, no strategic focus, disconnect from the public and hard to follow-up with. Essentially the solution was designed to move the needle, make decisions and plans that really matter.

The solution is both methodological (“how do we do government processes better?”) and practical (“what tools and mechanism should be in place to ripe technological benefits of the change?”). This model has changed the way we approach the entire strategic planning process, transforming both the minds and practical tools we use to plan for next year, focusing on efficiency and effectiveness simultaneity while creating a more inclusive, transparent and digital-infused process.

Focus: Instead of hundreds of goals, objectives, and tasks – we defined 13 main goals alongside the outcome indicators, and then all the plans are focused on key changes designed to achieve those strategic outcomes.
Success: Instead of focusing exclusively on planning, the platform supports managers with celebrate their success – allowing them to share key mile stones and achievements, with the city and the public. This creates more transparency and helps build trust with residents.
Experience: Instead of a complicated process that creates a frustrating user experience of outdated spreadsheets that are almost impossible to follow (for planners, employees, and certainly the public), we incorporated a digital interface that ensures a modern and user-friendly experience.
Connection: Instead of overload of information and complex plans that make residents feel detached, our new planning process connects the community (incorporating public consolation within the platform itself) and brings departments and constituents together.
Efficiency: We decided on the KISS model (Keep it simple, stupid) focusing on what matters the most. A two-layer platform (goals & plans) – instead of planning all the nitty gritty task, you report on them as a success report card.

The beneficiaries of the innovation are both:

City managers (easy-to-use interface, instead of endless spreadsheets, clarity on main focus areas and ability to share progress – success and challenges alike); and
The public – the process is much clearer, transparent and inclusive allowing them to contribute and follow main changes in the city.

Innovation Description

What Makes Your Project Innovative?

The strategic planning process & platform is innovative in the strategy planning landscape because:

We start with outcomes. Too often, cities build their strategy based on what they do – and not where they want to get. Here, the platform resides on a strict method of "outcomes first."
We cut performance bureaucracy. Our two layers approach (goals – plans, or outcomes – outputs) makes a clear difference between strategy and project management. We enabled leaders to ask what works and not write hundreds of technical tasks.
We connect people, and build trust. Strategic Plans and Action Plans rarely speak the language of ordinary employees and citizens. We changed the language so that every can understand what the city focus is, and what happened in the field.
We leverage technology. Powered by AI to support better decisions to create a transparent, inclusive, responsive digital interface that makes strategy fun and accessible to all.

What is the current status of your innovation?

The Strategic Planning Process & Platform is currently deployed. We kick started the planning process and introduction the methodological shift and digital platform in July and city managers are currently submitting their potential action-plans for the key outcomes.

Innovation Development

Collaborations & Partnerships

We collaborated with Insights.Us, a leading Gov-tech start up specialising in solutions to improve public sector decision making. The digital platform was developed by them, and we have worked together to implement and embed the methodological and practical shift with the whole municipality.

Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

Citizens – have access to main goals of the municipality, can track progress and success and engage with decision makers.
Government/city officials – have clarity on strategic outcomes and initiate their own cross-silos action plans to support the goals. The interface also allows to celebrate milestones and success, as well as updates on potential barriers.
Civil society and companies – can understand and accesses strategic focus of the municipality and keep track of progress and potential col

Innovation Reflections

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

We measure our success by the % of plans that were delivered on time (due to our alert algorithms and smart dashboards), as well as the % of outcomes achieved (which takes more time to measure).

Our first, output indicators:

We moved from ~1,500 goals to only 13 strategic outcomes for the entire municipality
All strategic goals have been formulated in terms of measurable outcomes (what is the shift in real world we want to see), and the plan are stipulated in outputs terms (what will the organization produce)
Most city executives have entered the platform, added their plans for next year and expressed satisfaction as for the simplicity of our design and user experience.

Challenges and Failures

Since we’re in relatively early stages of implementation, most of the challenges encountered thus far are in the field of mindset shift. Introducing new ways of thinking about the planning process, let alone deploying a digital platform that revolutionize the way we build our city’s strategy is not always easy. We created support mechanisms throughout the transformation journey, helping both with methodology and practical questions.

Conditions for Success

The first on foremost condition is leadership courage, acknowledging the exiting gap in strategic planning. Once leadership is committed, there’s a need for capacity building among existing human capital to introduce the new strategic planning process & platform. Our collaboration with Insights.us introduced digital infrastructure to harness the benefits of methodological shift as well the power of tech tools.

Replication

We pioneered this new strategic process & platform in collaboration with Insights.us, it has yet to be replicated in other municipalities. However, our transformation has sparked a hype among fellow municipalities and there has been much interest to learn more about the innovation we have implemented.

We believe the new strategic planning process & platform should, and gradually will, become the golden standard to planning and execution in local authorities in Israel and overseas. The digital platform developed by Insights.us is easily adjustable for other agencies, and it supports city managers in creating inclusive, transparent and efficient action plans to make a real difference for the constituents.

Lessons Learned

Everyone agrees strategic planning is important – but nobody wants to do it: the current methods are outdated and the quarterly reports on delivery became a lost battle against excel sheets. Strategic plans should set the course for a city over a three- to five-year period, at the end of which the plans should be re-evaluated and refreshed. The existing planning process in Israel is focused to hundreds of elaborated tasks, and more often than not misses the big picture view.

Delivery reports will now be based on stories of "what happened" rather than excel tables of "what we missed". The digital platform paved the way for a holistic approach by aggregating plans from different units under shared outcomes, with clear alerts and dashboards for different executives. Finally, citizens can connect to a beautifully designed website and engage with city officials, rather than staring at a heave PDF file or endless spreadsheet data pints.