The issue of who leads the strategic planning process versus its implementation will depend on the local parliamentary context. Important to note is that for successfully implementing the action plan(s) and its activities, projects will need to be formulated – large or small. And an important prerequisite for implementing projects is the presence of the appropriate oversight and management structures that are able to engage the high-level political and administrative leadership of the parliament and garner support from stakeholders from the respective functional areas.

As mentioned in the introduction of these Guidelines the strategic planning process should ideally be fulfilled by a dedicated committee. This committee (or another committee related to the functional area) should also be given the responsibility to take ownership of the respective action plans and work towards their implementation through methodically coordinating and mobilizing relevant resources to complete projected activities1, including from departments, sections, offices etc.

Programme Implementation Board

For managing and coordinating the implementation of projects the existence of a “Programme2 Implementation Board” (PIB) would be instrumental. Besides carrying the responsibility for monitoring individual projects, the PIB would also re-evaluate priorities, resolve issues and (re)allocate resources across projects. The PIB thus would be the “implementing arm” of the above mentioned committee to engage and coordinate all stakeholders involved in the implementation of the projects,as well as report back and where necessary escalate project / programme issues.

Project Management

It is recommended that the parliament invest, if it has not already, in developing sound project management competencies through the adoption of methodologies that provide tools for planning, cost analysis & budgeting, analysing risks and carrying out project evaluations & lessons learned.

Trained project managers should be able to coordinate the formulation of requirements and the scope of projects, plan respective work products within that scope and calculate the required time and resources. In addition they should be able to observe, record, resolve and where necessary, escalate issues in a timely manner.

Monitoring and evaluating the implementation of the strategy is an ongoing process that should ideally carry out annually but in same cases, (depending on the time span of the strategy plan as well as the management and oversight structures) it can be done every two or three years to assess whether the implementation of the action plan is progressing in the right direction, and the vision is being realized. These checkpoint, known as the “mid-term review” (or “annual review”), may result, depending on its outcomes, in a revision of the strategy and action plan(s) – see figure 2. The scope and steps of the mid-term review are similar to the initial four strategic planning steps.  However, instead of carrying out all the four steps all over again, the mid-term review is rather to assess the progress with respect to the original strategic goals, objectives and action plans and validate whether all the initial assumptions still apply.

The sections below explain how a mid-term review should be prepared and conducted (i.e. through which steps) and how its results can feed back into the strategic planning and implementation process.

Gathering documentation and analysis

Progress and evaluation

Ideally during the two to three year run-up to the mid-term review, the parliament has executed the action plans within a framework of oversight and management incorporating the relevant control mechanisms, including project management methodologies that consistently produced documentation such as “progress reports” and “project evaluation documents”. In preparation of the mid-term review this documentation should be gathered and analysed to draw conclusions about the progress of the action plan, as well as evaluate any issues arising and document lessons learned. The absence of this type of documentation can make the mid-term review preparations time consuming and tedious, as this documentation would first have to be “produced”, before the evaluation process can proceed which would delay the project completion.

SWOT analysis

In addition to the gathered project documentation – and based on it, a new Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis would have to be carried out  similarly as explained in Step 1. The Opportunities and Threats (OT) part would be rather straightforward as it concerns an external analysis, yet it could be enriched with external research (see next paragraph). The Strengths and Weaknesses (SW) part however would be slightly more complex as through the implementation of the action plan parliamentary services, processes and systems may have been altered. Thus prior to making the SW analysis an overview and assessment should be made of the changes i.e. new services, processes and systems within the functional areas (updated process maps)

Quality of services and processes

As part of the preparations for the mid-term review the improvement in quality of services should also be assessed. Some judgement on improvements can be made from “project evaluation reports”, however a more “qualitative measurement” at the “clients level” after a certain period of completion of the project, will yield more insight.

MPs and their staff, Committee members and staff, users of the parliamentary information systems, citizens etc would have to be given the opportunity to indicate how they perceive the quality of the new services. Questions should be asked such as: “Have services been improved?”; “Have systems become more user friendly?”; “Can you get the information you are looking for more easily”; “Are they available in the right formats, complete and regularly updated”; “Has the parliament become more transparent, open, and does it engage more with the public”?

Using questionnaires and internal interviews, opinions can be gathered from the relevant stakeholders. Researching the views and opinions from citizens and other external stakeholders might require more time and could perhaps be commissioned to universities and research institutes that focus on relations between parliament and citizens. This implies too that this research should be carried out well in advance of the mid-term review.

Project implementation practices

Progress reports and evaluations are useful. However they may not always be enough to say something about the “parliament's ability to execute” i.e. whether the overall project implementation practices were satisfactory.

One way of assessing this is simply by asking all the senior staff involved in the implementation of the action plans (i.e. department heads, senior staff, project managers and focal points) for their opinion on the project planning process, clearness of project objectives, products to be delivered, execution of tasks etc. For gathering this information in a very structured and consistent manner the questionnaire for “projects lessons learned” (see Template 5.1) may be used. Once completed by all the stakeholders, using a spreadsheet the statistics can be made indicating areas that were executed (non) satisfactorily.

Strategy mid-term review management workshop

Similar to Step 2 of the strategic planning process, for the mid-term review a “management workshop” would be extremely useful. This workshop conducted over one or two days, would ideally see the participation of the political and administrative leadership of the parliament, as well as the managerial stakeholders who have been involved in the implementation of the action plans for different functional areas. The workshop would serve to:

• assess the progress and achievements;
• highlight good implementation practises and lessons learned;
• check whether all the original assumptions are still valid, including vision statement and strategic goals and objectives.

To cover the first two items, presentations would have to be made based on the analyses that have been carried out in preparation of the review. The findings would need to be discussed and achievements (or lack thereof) clarified.

In “checking the assumptions” an overview of the internal and external analysis (SWOT) should be presented to the workshop participants, and particularly the leadership should be invited to elaborate on whether they would like to see a change in the vision of the parliament. The discussions should focus on questions like “Given the new demands from society, driven by technological innovations and greater access to information is our current vision still forthcoming?”; “Should the vision statement need to be changed to better reflect these demands”?

Subsequently the administrative leadership and managerial stakeholders should clearly express their view on whether the current strategic goals and objectives are still valid, and how these would need to be adjusted to remain in the scope of a revised vision statement.

In line with the strategic planning steps, should the strategic goals and objectives be changed, then the gaps and challenges need to be revised and new recommendations and actions plan defined for the next two to three years. At the end of the workshop, a review by the stakeholders of its outcomes should take place followed by the official sign-off.

• Project Management:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRINCE2
  http://www.ogc.gov.uk/methods_prince_2__background.asp
  http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file40647.pdf

• Project management lessons learned:
  http://pmtips.net/lessons-learned-template/
  http://www.usask.ca/its/services/itproject_services/guidelines/basic.php

• Enterprise Architecture:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_architecture
  http://www.agiledata.org/essays/enterpriseArchitecture.html
  http://www.enterprise-architecture.info/Images/EA%20Tools/Enterprise%20Architecture%20Tool%20Selection%20Guide%20v50.pdf

• Documents standards:
  http://documentfreedom.org/DocumentStandards

• Usability testing:
  http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-usability/usability-testing.shtml
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability_testing
  http://www.infodesign.com.au/ftp/UsabilityTesting.pdf