In May 2021, the Municipality of Ate, was facing issues with their service to its neighbour's due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Because of this, our strategic partner FEMULP connected us with Ate, area that requested GovLink the implementation of a pilot to perform public opinion poll, in order to gather relevant information para about priority issues for the community, so as to improve the municipal responses facing the Covid-19 and focus the attention on women to generate a solidarity economy.
Innovation Summary
Innovation Overview
GovLink is a platform who helps to articulate alliances between the GovTech’s ecosystem actors and solve asymmetries between the supply-demand, allowing the civil servants to know and get acquaintance to the technological supply, through pilot programmes, so that they can be aware of which kind of technology they could buy, before thinking about the PPI processes. In this way, the civil servants get trained and retain relevant information that will allow them to produce functional requirements. All this occurs within the framework of blind selection exercises that favor the fight against corruption, inclusion and identity.
The specific objectives of the pilot:
- To boost the abilities in the civil servants selected by the Ate Municipality in the use of the innovation methods;
- Link the Municipality of Ate with one or various international GovTech start-ups with validated solutions and perform a blind selection to choose one to carry out the proposed pilot exercise; and
- Implement a validation exercise of small scale, that incorporates the layout, the demonstration and test of the technological solution, to be able to know the basic configuration, content and other characteristics that prove the functionality and performance of the solution.
The direct beneficiaries of the pilot were the priority areas of Municipality of Ate linked to the pilot’s development and the long-term beneficiaries have been the citizens.
For the future, from the pilot, the municipality of Ate has shown its interest in signing a work agreement with GovLink to be able, according to its priority needs, to use the innovative GovLink platform to find different technology-based providers that help the municipality to solve its social problems through long term. We have been planning together to carry out an extended monitoring in 2023 and training plan in innovation methodologies for the year 2023.
The course of action was determined, first of all, with the selection of the issues to address by the Municipality authorities. Having as alternatives the nine work categories, the authorities of the Municipality chose category #5: Communication, reputation and image. The next step was to proceed to call on the participation of the actors in the priority areas linked to the pilot’s development. With the Ate’s civil servants, we were able to define and frame the proposed issues by the involved areas, thanks to a training workshop in the Human Centered Design methodology. It was achieved the definition of the problem to address.
The next step, a regional technological call was made to the GovTech start-ups that were able to attend to the defined problem with the Municipality of Ate. The call was answered by start-ups of three countries: Brazil, Argentina and Mexico. The blind selection process started with the assessment of compliance of the four basic criteria defined by GovLink for the startups selection. After the assessment, the authorities of Ate selected the GovTech startup Brazilian-Chilean Daoura Insights, AI solution and cognitive technologies that enable the governments to understand people’s needs, from their digital expressions and make decisions based in findings and relevant knowledge.
Daoura Insights proceeded to analyze 25 internet sources selected by the authorities of the Municipality. More than five thousand manifestations in a 30-day period, from 1st April 2021 were analyzed and compilated, and a demonstration of the system operation and obtained data was done through a series of online meetings. Daoura collected and analyzed 5.796 manifestations in the pilot’s period: 372 were about transport, 105 about health (related to Covid-19), 104 were about citizen security, 30 about economy and employment, and others. 35.24% of the manifestations were positive, 40% were negative and 24.76% of the manifestations were neutral.
Concern for the pandemic and its consequences was found. Conditions to continue with prevention campaigns among the citizens and the municipality were found. A concern of the population was found for the municipality to improve its relationship and link with itinerant commerce and small businesses. It was detected that “transport” was the urban category with the most frequent manifestations, with reported issues such as traffic, street and sidewalks maintenance, holes on the streets and others. It was a finding that was understood by the municipality as an opportunity for action and communication.
The period of the pilot allowed the extraction and analysis of relevant information for the understanding of the Ate’s neighbors' citizen manifestations in digital platforms and created perceptions and specific knowledge regarding the addressed problems, which enabled the authorities of the District Municipality of Ate to make decisions based on evidence and reliable data. This allowed them to enhance their management of Covid-19 and their relations with neighbors and citizens, from July21 onwards.
Innovation Description
What Makes Your Project Innovative?
GovLink seeks to work with civil servants, first, training them and helping them to frame their issues accordingly, to generate functional requirements, so immediately after connect them through a process of blind selection GovTech validated initiatives. In this sense, GovLink intends to support the process of Public Purchase of Innovation (PPI) from the necessity of fighting back the administrative lack of knowledge in innovation and reduce the corrupt behavior of political or commercially influential actors, proposing a blind selection mechanism that promote gender and inclusion, since this is a way of minimize the unconscious biases. It is intended to avoid discrimination, for example, against people with ethnic names, their race, or that women are undervalued. GovLink propose the supply overview GovTech so they could be selected by their value, experience and merit. By doing so, GovLink intends to impact in the way the administration’s approach the processes previous to the PPI.
What is the current status of your innovation?
The experience developed by GovLink throughout its first year of life, first implementing the ATE experience, has allowed positive progress in the validation of the model, making clear the usefulness of the idea and the interest of governments in a mechanism that facilitates the processes of PPI in conditions that address corruption, regulatory gaps, discrimination in procurement processes, among other aspects. Based on this experience, GovLink has been developing a series of guidelines to consolidate the blind-dates proposal.
The objective of the creation of GovLink's blind-dates proposal is to challenge and confront the entrenched vices in the PPI processes. Our immediate perspective in the short term is to continue with the development of piloting exercises with ATE and others, strengthen the mechanisms for calling start-ups, improve the timing of the pilots, improve the dynamics with governments, validate the regulatory sandbox, develop a complete training experience, etc.
Innovation Development
Collaborations & Partnerships
- Femulp http://www.femulp.org/: He was responsible for connecting the Municipality with GovLink, joined the entire pilot process.
- Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (UPC) https://www.upc.edu.pe/: Provides support to GovLink in all the projects, technical assistance, financial support, etc.
- CCO Investment & Legal Advisors https://www.cco-advisors.pe/: Legal firm associated with GovLink that handles all legal documentation, trades, etc. accompanying the pilot projects.
Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries
More than 10 public officials from the Municipality were trained in Human Centered Design and received technical assistance.
Innovation Reflections
Results, Outcomes & Impacts
- Awareness of the Municipality team about the importance of a proper management of data as very valuable asset when designing strategies, policies or making decisions was achieved.
- Awareness of the importance of validation exercises, to get close to technology, previous to the contractual calls or public purchases of innovation.
- Positive feedback was received in the satisfaction surveys
- 100% of the civil servants were able to know, at least one new technological solution that they didn’t know before.
- 100% of the trained officials are experts today in at least one new methodology for innovation or in the framing of problems
- 90% of the trained civil servants have expressed a high level of satisfaction
- 80% of the trained civil servants claim to have the ability to apply the new methodology learnt.
- 80% of the civil servants consider that they can elaborate a functional technical requirement
- 100% of the planned activities for the implementation of the pilot were successfully completed.
Challenges and Failures
Peruvian regulations have barriers and gaps, and do not respond to the reality of the streets and the needs of a new digital society. In Peru, it is necessary to change the parameters with which public purchase is developed
Conditions for Success
In Peru, it is necessary to change the parameters with which public purchase is developed and the law Nº30225. The pilots need more technical assistance and human resources to strengthen their blind selection mechanisms, strengthen the team of mentors, among others. Greater financial and political support is needed.
Replication
In 2021 we carried out a second pilot with the Regional Government of Arequipa and in 2022 another pilot with the Regional Government of La Libertad, with very good and interesting results. We plan to carry out 3 more exercises in 2023. The replication potential is huge.
Our immediate perspective in the short and medium term is to continue with the development of piloting exercises, strengthen the mechanisms for calling start-ups, improve the timing of the pilots, improve the dynamics with local and regional governments in the Peruvian case, validate the proposed regulatory sandbox model, develop a complete training experience, in accordance with the needs of public officials participating in the pilots, and manage multilateral technical support and/or sources of funding for entrepreneurs for the implementation of our operational lines, develop a complete training experience, and others.
Lessons Learned
- Lesson #1: Peruvian regulations have barriers and gaps, and do not respond to the reality of the streets and the needs of a new digital society.
- Lesson #2: In Peru, it is necessary to change the parameters with which public purchase is developed
- Lesson #3: The piloting stage proposed favors capacity building and the strengthening of technology-enabled democracy.
- Lesson #4: Training in innovation methodologies and technology-related topics is a useful tool for strengthening local and regional abilities and competencies.
- Lesson #5: Project planning and phasing must anticipate the impact of political problems.
- Lesson #6: Blind selection can become a new tool for supply-demand selection in the GovTech context, to which to allocate resources and research.
- Lesson #7: In order to meet the deadlines and objectives, the soundness of the methodology applied to the project must be ensured.
Supporting Videos
Status:
- Identifying or Discovering Problems or Opportunities - learning where and how an innovative response is needed
- Generating Ideas or Designing Solutions - finding and filtering ideas to respond to the problem or opportunity
- Developing Proposals - turning ideas into business cases that can be assessed and acted on
- Implementation - making the innovation happen
- Evaluation - understanding whether the innovative initiative has delivered what was needed
- Diffusing Lessons - using what was learnt to inform other projects and understanding how the innovation can be applied in other ways
Innovation provided by:
Media:
Date Published:
24 January 2023