Roma Capitale embraces the digital revolution and experiences dramatic cost reductions

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“Roma Capitale” is the new name of the institution that administers Rome, the capital city of Italy. Roma Capitale comprises several types of departments providing public services such as city planning, tax administration, sport and leisure, and culture. Roma Capitale employs around 26,000 people and serves the whole citizenship in the wider Rome area, covering more than 2,700,000 people in 19 districts.

Paper documents: a wasteful scenario
Roma Capitale wanted to accelerate its administrative procedures, which were based on the review and approval of paper documents, a process that exposed the council to the risk of delay and error. This wasted valuable time and money. Paperwork related to matters concerning “Delibere di Giunta” (Council Deliberations) and “Determinazioni Dirigenziali” (Executive Determinations) had to be physically transported from one office to another. To carry the documents, Roma Capitale appointed specific employees, called walkers, who were responsible for carrying these documents across the city.

The Delibere di Giunta and Determinazioni Dirigenziali documents are reviewed and checked by the accounting department, which has branches throughout the city.

With the legacy system, reviewed and approved documents had to be walked back from the accounting department to the office of origin, further delaying the approval process.

Reliable, long-term partnership with IBM and SAP
Roma Capitale looked to create a digital solution, designed to accelerate the review and approval process, cut the risks of physical transportation, and reduce operational costs.

Claudio Mannino, Deputy Manager at the Ragioneria Generale of Roma Capitale, explains, “For a public administration like Roma Capitale, it is extremely important to choose a good, reliable and long-term partner. The choice of our IT partners was the last phase of a complex and long process, which started with a competitive tender and went through a series of further steps.”

“IBM® came out on top every time, and we were especially impressed by their well-established relationship with SAP®, which was very important for this project, as it concerned the integration of our financial processes.”

Roma Capitale chose SAP applications to manage many of its core business processes, including taxation, finance, budget, mortgages, management and control divisions.

The SAP applications provide a reliable, robust business management solution that can be extended with new functional components as necessary, particularly as new processes are imposed on the municipality by central government.

Moving to digital paperwork
Working with IBM Global Business Services®, Roma Capitale created a solution called “Digital Managerial Legal Document”, based on SAP NetWeaver® Composition Environment, the SAP Interactive Forms software by Adobe and Digital Signature Private Key software running on IBM Power® servers. Roma Capitale has digitized a part of its paper administrative documents and introduced a secure digital solution for every aspect of its legal processes.

The citizen’s/enterprise’s request is created directly via the web, and then converted by the solution into a PDF file. Based on the type of request, the file is digitally processed according to the pre-defined workflow that routes it to all the appropriate offices. The solution is based on the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach, which enables maximum flexibility and interoperability of several information systems, and uses a wide range of IBM software including Lotus® Domino, PowerHA®, PowerVM® Enterprise Edition and Tivoli® Storage Manager Extended Edition. SAP Interactive Forms is used to manage the Digital Managerial Legal Documents user interface, while SAP Business Process Management (BPM) manages business processes. Electronic signatures, another feature of the new IT environment, are provided by Adobe Digital Signature. IBM Global Business Services provided services including Marketing and Sales Transformation.

Claudio Mannino remarks, “Moving to a digital system was a long-term investment in terms of time and money, which is already delivering the results we expected.

“Our users previously had different access points and several authorizations according to the department they belonged to. Now, if one employee works for more than one office, he or she can access the SAP applications using a single username. After logging in, the user can start creating a document using the templates provided, and, in a significantly shorter time, begin the new process by copying and pasting the relevant information already stored in the system.”

The final documents and attachments are all in digital format, and, after being signed off using electronic signatures from the relevant person at their office of origin, they are digitally transmitted to the accounting department. At the final stage, the accounting executive reviews the document, endorses it with an electronic signature, and sends it back to the office of origin, all without the need for slow, manual transfer of paper documents.

Significant savings and tangible benefits
Claudio Mannino adds, “One of the most important features of the IBM Global Business Services and SAP platform is, undoubtedly, the provision of a single, centralized system that allows Roma Capitale to save time and money when creating and transferring the Determinazioni Dirigenziali from the office of origin to the accounting department.

“In addition, the introduction of electronic signatures has saved a remarkable amount of time. As all the documents are now digital, we’ve also greatly reduced our printing costs and reclaimed a significant amount of floor space.”

Another positive result of the solution is the ability to finalize processes and documents concerning Rome’s poorest citizens quickly and reliably.

Claudio Mannino comments, “The typical period of time that would elapse between the authorization of a claim and the actual payment to the citizen was around 40 days. As you can imagine, such a long wait would often generate serious problems for our poorest citizens, who might have needed the payment to come through quickly.”

The IBM solution has enabled Roma Capitale to digitalize “special handling” documents to complete payments within 15 days, delivering improved service to the weakest socio-economic groups in society.

“Now, every single municipality within the city of Rome uses the same application to produce accounting documents and define payments. The optimization and centralization of the system deliver huge time savings for us, and produces direct benefits for citizens.”

Claudio Mannino concludes, “IBM, SAP and Roma Capitale have worked closely together and have delivered an innovative solution with which we are extremely satisfied.”