Innova.TO was initiated by two employees of the city of Turin to further develop the ideas of their colleagues into new services and solutions that create both social and economic benefits for the public administration and the local community.  Changing mindsets is an important aspect of Innova.TO. It has been designed to encourage public employees to become active participants in the city’s growing “smart community”. The project reflects the growing importance placed on staff and customers in the redesign of public service -  municipal employees know how things function, are aware of user expectations and, for this reason, have a wealth of knowledge and experience.

Innova.TO is a key initiative of the city of Torino’s strategy to trigger urban innovation that leverages collaborative knowledge and action to create a multi-actor local ecosystem as well as a new open culture nurtured within the city administrationand the territory.

Innova.TO is part of Torino Smart City, a project that encourages participatory approaches and knowledge sharing within the city administration.

Innova.TO has been designed by a team drawn from different departments of the City of Torino to assemble appropriated competencies and assure a good level of knowledge for the definition of each phase of the implementation process.

Innova.TO can be a useful tool for the improvement of policies and programmes and lead to providing services of high quality, that may generate savings. Small or large, the ideas of employees can be valuable resources, especially in the current context, where public entities are called to do more with less.

Of the 71 proposals submitted, 63 were from individual employees, five from by two employees and 3 were proposed by three people. Proposals were related to service quality improvement (19), new services (7), environmental friendly projects (7), organisational development (16), employee welfare (5), informatics (3), and operation efficiency (14).

The web-platform hosting Innova.TO has obtained more than 4,000 contacts.

Two of the 10 project that received awards are listed below:

• 5*1,000. The idea was using the 5x1,000 EUR donation for the development of specific projects selected by the local community. In this case, the citizens of Turin can see what they finance through the donation of the 5x1000 EUR of their individual income tax return, promoting the transparency of public action and increased participation by the local community.

• Smart solutions for smart procurement. The project proposed to organise a team of municipal employees dedicated to the procurement of innovative goods and services. It encompasses the definition of a new organisational model and dedicated administrative instruments to systematise the use of innovative procurement and realise Smart City policies. The project proposes the installation of sensors to regulate the intensity of the light in public buildings and, consequently, reduce energy consumptions.

The lead agency for the project is the city of Turin, the budget for the project is 12,000 Euro, no public money has been allocated. Sponsorship has been provided by  Enel, Huawei, La Stampa, iGuido Torino carsharing, TO bike sharing and UniCredit.

Innova.TO demonstrates that municipal employees can engage in a collaborative way to develop innovative ideas. It provides employees the opportunity to take a step back from their workplace roles to consider the wider aspects of the organisation’s functions.

Innova.TO won an award for Best Practice in the Innovation marketing / Offer qualification / Relations personalisation category at the Place Marketing Forum 2016, an annual international conference organised by the New Place Marketing and Attractiveness Chair of the Public Management Institute (Aix-Marseille University)

Innova.TO has been successfully promoted in public events such as the first URBACT City Festival (Riga, 6-8 May 2015) and during the Third World Forum of Local Economic Development, organised by the United Nations (Torino, 13-16 October 2015).

The main challenge is to increase the participation of the city of Turin employees.

Innova.TO is a model that is easily replicable in other cities. It is cost effective, and very flexible and agile.

http://www.comune.torino.it/innovato/en/

http://www.torinosmartcity.it/

URBACT case study: Everyone's an innovator, 10 000 public employees, 10 000 potential innovators: http://urbact.eu/everyones-innovator