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sustainability
Article
Applying the Open Government Principles to the
University’s Strategic Planning: A Sound Practice
Cristina Moreno-Carmona 1 , José Manuel Feria-Domínguez 2 and Alicia Troncoso 3, *
1 Centre for Postgraduate Studies, Pablo de Olavide University, ES-41013 Seville, Spain;
cmorcar@fundacion.upo.es
2 Department of Economics Financial and Accounting, Pablo de Olavide University, ES-41013 Seville, Spain;
jmferdom@upo.es
3 Division of Computer Science, Pablo de Olavide University, ES-41013 Seville, Spain
* Correspondence: atrolor@upo.es; Tel.: +34-954-349-230
Received: 28 January 2020; Accepted: 20 February 2020; Published: 28 February 2020
Abstract: This paper describes an innovative experience based on the citizen participation as a
fundamental principle of the Open Government, regarding the strategic planning in higher education
institutions. Such innovation lies on two main pillars: the stakeholders’ approach (versus the traditional
product-service orientation) and a web platform based on UserVoice R and Wordpress R software.
The web platform was designed not only for building up a consensual strategic plan in a medium-sized
Spanish public university, but also to monitor and control it once implemented. During the participation
stage, all the proposals were openly discussed and voted by the whole university community. One year
later, the online platform for monitoring the Strategic Plan was re-launched in order to rate, comment
and vote the values reached by the key performance indicators. The adoption of such technological tools
turns into a sound practice of governance for sustainable strategic management, by encouraging the
collaborative workflow, participation, reflection and learning. Moreover, it promotes the stakeholders’
identification with corporate goals and enhance their commitment to the university’s strategic plan.
Keywords: open government; technological innovation; sustainable strategic management; stakeholders
approach; higher education institutions
1. Introduction
The concept of “open government” was coined in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s. This concept
aimed to reduce bureaucratic opacity and to encourage the involvement of citizens in the evaluation
and control of public agencies and their performance thus creating a thirst for new management
perspectives [1,2]. Over the course of the last decade, the concepts of “governance” and “sound
governance” have also become common in the context of the European Commission [3]. In 2009, it was
president Obama [4] who first defined the main principles of Open Government in his “Memorandum
on Transparency and Open Government” as transparency, participation and collaboration. In Spain,
the Basque Government was the first to commit to the principles of open government; the online portal
“Irekia” (meaning ‘open’ in Basque language) [5] is a clear example of this. In 2011, Open Government
Partnership (henceforth, OGP) endorsed an Open Government Declaration that set a series of minimum
common standards for all initiatives [6]. The OGP formally launched on 20 September 2011, when the
eight founding governments (Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, Philippines, South Africa, United
Kingdom and United States) endorsed an Open Government Declaration, and announced the action
plans for their countries. Since September, OGP has welcomed the commitment of 47 additional
governments to join the Partnership.
Sustainability 2020, 12, 1826; doi:10.3390/su12051826 www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainabilitySustainability 2020, 12, 1826 2 of 13
One of the main benefits of the implementation of open government strategies is to establish greater
confidence in the government. Trust is a result of Open Government that can reinforce its performance
in other aspects. In addition, if citizens trust the government and their specific policies, they may be
more willing to pay (fees, contributions, taxes) to support and finance those policies. On other hand,
another benefit is to guarantee better results at the lowest cost. The co-design and implementation
of policies, programs and provision of services with citizens, businesses and civil society offers the
potential to exploit a broader repository of ideas and resources. Also, the open government increases
compliance levels as making people part of the process helps them understand the challenges of
reform and can help ensure that decisions made are perceived as legitimate. To promote innovation
and new economic activities is another goal of the open government. The commitment of citizens
is increasingly and is recognized as a driving force for innovation and the creation of value in the
public and private sectors. Moreover, the open government ensures equity of access to the formulation
of public policies by reducing the threshold for access to decision processes that people face as
barriers to participation. And finally, to govern under the principles of open government improves
effectiveness by taking advantage of the knowledge and resources of citizens who otherwise face
barriers to participate. Citizen participation can guarantee that policies are more specific and meet
their needs, eliminating potential waste. However, effective participation requires an understanding
of the evolving relationship between the human and technological dimensions in order to prepare
citizens for this new technological era [7,8]. A detailed description of all these benefits can be found
in [1]. The open governance approach also has some weaknesses. People are considered to be the
heart of any open government initiative since their involvement and participation is crucial for its
own success [9,10]. For this reason, it is important to take into account the main drivers for citizen’s
participation and collaboration. To some extent, the success of the open government initiative relies
on citizens’ willingness to interact with the institution and provide input on the given task [11].
To overcome this potential weaknesses, Schmidthuber et al. [12] suggested the implementation of a
reward system to increase the platform interaction among participants but also to include elements of
gamification to increase their enjoyment feeling.
Ortiz de Zárate (2012) introduced a descriptive model, called “LUDO”, to understand and classify
open government initiatives [13]. The main goals of LUDO are to contribute to the introduction of open
public policies in a systematic way, to ensure that participation initiatives are well designed, to clarify
the role of the public sector in the process, and finally to establish a clear contractual relationship with
internal and external stakeholders.
According to the LUDO model, the grade of opening of an initiative can be classified into the
following three levels: Information, Query and Delegation. The information level is the initial basic
requirement of any opening strategy. It can not be said that power is being returned to the citizens,
but it is the first step to empower it, at least the essential thing to make it possible to participate in
the following levels. The communication that is established in this level is eminently unidirectional,
although in a secondary way it can collect certain feedback. The query level can be considered that at
this level a part of the power is distributed, establishing a bidirectional communication that aims to
maintain a conversation relationship. Finally, the delegation level involves the return of power to the
public in the specific area of public management that is the object of the initiative, and society will
play the role traditionally exercised unilaterally by the Administration. In this maximum degree of
openness, the Administration acts as a platform supporting a distributed network.
An open government initiative is closely related to e-government based on the extensive utilization
of information and communication technologies (ICTs) towards an open government and available
data and communication among all stakeholders [14]. In recent years, many web platforms have been
designed by applying the open government principles under different European projects.
In IMPACT project coordinated by Gordon in 2013 [15] a toolbox was developed for supporting
deliberations about public policy. Users can visualize arguments about policy, can make a consultation
and can simulate the legal effects of policy proposals in real and hypothetical cases. The toolbox is basedSustainability 2020, 12, 1826 3 of 13
on computational models of argumentation. In the UbiPOL project coordinated by Irani in 2013 [16]
an ubiquitous platform is developed for the participation of citizens in everyday life. The application
is designed for a mobile framework and information about relevant policies is provided depending
on the localization of the citizen. The Liv+Gov project coordinated by Thimm in 2015 [17] provided a
mobile government solution that allows citizens to accurately express their needs to government by
using a variety of mobile sensing technologies available in their smartphones. The PADGETS project
coordinated by Charalabidis in 2012 [18] consisted in building politics gadgets, which are distributed in
social networks. The interactions between users and gadgets are analyzed by RapidMiner commercial
package. The goal of the politics gadgets is to allow politicians to throw political messages during
campaign periods and to create reports with opinion mining results. In the WeGov project coordinated
by Walland in 2012 [19], the tool selected only the important post and classifies users according to their
behavior. A further improvement is required to prepare the toolbox for commercial-quality release.
The CROSSOVER project coordinated by Misuraca in 2013 [20] consisted in bringing the links between
different global communities promoting the exchange of knowledge and implementing an international
roadmap based on ICT solutions for policy modeling. The NOMAD project coordinated by Charalabidis
in 2015 [21] extracted information from the web and analyzed the sentiment of the citizens regarding
the policy. Finally, in the LISBOA PARTICIPA project coordinated by Caçador in 2017 [22], a platform
was designed for promoting the participation of citizens in Lisboa to decide where to better invest
public money. Thus, the models of interaction with citizens were redefined. The participation is divided
into 3 phases: firstly, citizens present their proposals, then a technical analysis is made by the different
municipal departments according to the areas of competence transforming the ideas to projects. Finally,
the projects are submitted to citizens to vote and decide which are the winning ideas.
Traditionally, the World Wide Web has been used by organizations and individuals as a powerful
tool for communication. In education, it provides with on-demand access to any information, anytime
and anywhere, and material for a given course or for tutoring [23]. More specifically, web-based tools
have been successfully applied for students’ assessment [24,25] as well as promoting collaborative
learning [26,27]. Despite the variety of existing web applications, to the best of our knowledge, none of
them have been applied to the strategic management in higher education institutions. Therefore,
our main contribution to the existing works is to present an innovative sound practice, based on
technological tools, this time applied to the design and the follow up of the strategic planning process.
Thus, on the one hand the design of the strategy of the organization is carried out by the main actors
or stakeholders in the university such as students, professors and administration personnel, and the
other hand, the technologies are used for supporting the co-production and collaborative development,
whereby stakeholders are partners, as opposed to customers, in the delivery of new public services
defined in the university’s strategy.
The main contributions of this paper are twofold. Firstly, an innovative approach, such as the
adoption of the stakeholder approach versus the traditional product-service orientation used until now
in most of the university strategic plans. Secondly, the open e-government based elaboration of the
strategic plan by all members of the university community through the use of specialized technologies
for citizen consultation and participation. To the best of author’s knowledge, it is the first time that a
strategic plan has been developed in a Spanish university in an open and collaborative manner using
new technologies as well as adopting this stakeholder point of view.
The rest of the paper is structured as follows: Section 2 makes a description of the digital platform
designed for interactions among stakeholders and people from the government. Section 3 describes
the methodology followed in the participation process shown in this paper. Section 4 presents an
analysis of data extracted from the participation in the platform. Section 5 closes the paper giving
some final conclusions.Sustainability 2020, 12, 1826 4 of 13
2. Web Platform: Technical Description
New technological trends have emerged recently, such as the cloud computing, which offer
solutions to particular needs arising in higher education institutions. In spite of the initial rejection
to use the cloud for reasons related to the security of information and data protection, the cloud
computing is a fact today. In such scenario, to buy technology is being transformed into buying of
services to providers and payment for their use, under new concepts such as Infrastructure as a Service
(IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) y Platform as a Service (PaaS).
The UserVoice (www.UserVoice.com) software used for carrying out this innovative experience is
based on the SaaS business model. This software does not have any special technical requirement and
can be integrated with other applications or websites.
In this work, UserVoice has been integrated alongside with a website based on the Wordpress
(www.wordpress.com) open source technology. Recently, the UserVoice developers have also created
an API, which allows to generate an API client in an administration console and the installation of a
software development kit depending on the programming language (php, java, python ruby or C#).
The UserVoice software is very flexible and provides with many possibilities for its integration
with a website. Namely, it is possible to add widgets, to customize the portal changing logos, colors or
using templates CSS or HTML, to be embedded in an iPhone application using the native IOS SDK of
UserVoice, integration with the identity management system via encrypted token, SAML or Active
Directory, etc.
Basically, the most used features of the UserVoice tool are feedback forums and in-app widgets
to listening opinions of stakeholders, a vote system called SmartVote that offers the possibility to
the stakeholders to mark their priorities, a support ticket system to know the trace and respond to
questions and requests of the stakeholders, and finally, a repository with answers to common questions
for helping to stakeholders to find easily the information desired.
The most important features related to the vote system, feedbacks and the e-ticketing tool are
described below. The vote system is a smart vote, which shows users a set of ideas and asks them to
choose which idea they want you to build next. When a user picks an idea, they can choose to just
“pick” it or they can “pick+subscribe” which subscribes them to updates. SmartVote has users rank
ideas. While users creating and supporting one other’s ideas helps you gauge interest, it doesn’t let
you see how users would rank ideas. SmartVote has users prioritize ideas as they pick between them.
It lets you see how ideas are ranked against one another and which ideas consistently come out on top.
You can also auto-prompt users for SmartVote, so you can engage your more silent users that have
valuable feedback to share, but might not post on your forum. SmartVote is based on the creation of
polls, being a poll a set of ideas on public forums that you want to test, and uses the Glicko rating
system (GRS) to look for clear winners in a set of suggestions or ideas. The GRS was invented by
Mark Glickman and is a method for assessing a player’s strength in games of skill, such as Chess and
Go. In our case, the GRS evaluates the weight of the ideas composing of the pool using the measure
Ratings Deviation (RD) defined by the following equation:
q
RD = min( RD02 + c2 t, 350) (1)
where RD0 is the initial rating, t is the time elapsed from the last idea, 350 is the default value for
non-ranked ideas and c is a parameter with the value 34.6 usually.
Regarding to feedback received by the stakeholders of any institution, UserVoice offers
the possibility of assigning the Contributor role to anyone in your company and this role can
capture feedback on behalf of stakeholders and have it saved directly in UserVoice. In particular,
the Contributor has a sidebar which is a bookmark that can be opened on top of a web page or
app allowing to capture feedback from an email or support ticket and link it to ideas in UserVoice.
In addition, a Contributor can quickly look up any stakeholder to see their previous feedback and
view status updates for existing feedback. For the management of the feedbacks, UserVoice can beSustainability 2020, 12, 1826 5 of 13
integrated with the well-known JIRA e-ticketing system used by 75,000 companies in 122 countries.
Once the Jira integration has been installed and configured, a new section labeled “Linked Jira Issues”
will be visible in UserVoice when the admins view a new suggestion or idea. From here, UserVoice
items can be linked to existing Jira issues (or create new ones), and see details of the linked Jira issues
at a glance. JIRA is a tool developed by Australian Company Atlassian and it is used for bug tracking,
issue tracking, and project management. The JIRA dashboard consists of many useful functions and
features, which make handling of issues easy.
3. Method
European higher education institutions have experienced an unprecedented transformation due to
the new social and economic paradigms and the convergence to the European higher education area.
In this context, stressed by the global financial crisis, the strategic planning process [28,29] has become
a crucial tool for the university governance, sustainability and management, ensuring the continuous
adaptation of the University to the challenges from the environment and thus consolidating its leadership
in education, research, innovation, social responsibility and knowledge transfer; all in a circle self-feeding
process throughout life. Inherited from business management, the strategic perspective implies an
internal reflection, about resources and capabilities of the institution, but also external in order to detect
opportunities and threats in the environment. Strategic Planning is a means of establishing major
directions for the university, school or department. It is a structured approach to anticipating the future
and exploiting the inevitable [30], but also an appropriate response to turbulence [31].
In this paper, we describe a sound open government practice, based on a web platform, for innovating
in the strategic planning process, but also based on the stakeholders’ approach [32,33]. For this purpose,
the LUDO methodology is applied. The application of the LUDO model to the participatory process for
the preparation of the strategic plan of the university, as well as facilitating the design of the initiative,
can help to establish clear conditions for both the university community and the citizens to participate
and, on the other hand, to reflect and assume with security for the management team the implications
that the opening process entails. On the one hand, this establishes a clear social contract between both
members of the university community and citizens who freely decide to participate. On the other hand,
the board of directors that instead of defining and designing in isolation the strategic plan that must be
submitted to the university senate to approve the program of actions to develop in the next few years,
decides to open it to the participation of all. When an open government initiative is carried out, the first
thing that must be understood is what is being opened. Public policies are constructed according to a
continuous cycle of reflection and action, analysis and execution, which superficially resembles other
cycles such as, for example, the Deming’s cycle PDCA (plan-do-check-act), well-known as continuous
improvement cycle, which constitutes the core of quality management systems. Perhaps too often, this
cycle is applied with less awareness, and therefore with less clarity to the desired. The cycle of public
policies facilitates understanding and describing political action, so it should be clearly applied in all
government actions as is the case of a strategic plan of an organization for next years. But it has more
relevance even when an important step is taken, as it is to open a political action to participation. In this
way, in addition to doing it with clarity, it is done with security. Following the simple formulation
proposed by the LUDO model for the process or cycle of public policies there are four phases, which
are define, design, do and assess. These phases have inspired the methodology describe below.
The strategic plan promoted by the vice chancellor for ICT, quality and innovation with the
participation of the general directorate of strategy and innovation, is divided into three key stages:
3.1. Stage I: Gestation
The first stage began with the initial strategic proposal presented by the general directorate of
strategy and innovation to the governing board. This proposal was also presented to the university
board of general directors and the faculties’ vice deans of strategy and quality during a series of
round tables. Specifically, the new philosophy now set forth is based on the stakeholders’ approach,Sustainability 2020, 12, 1826 6 of 13
which is seen as an alternative to the traditional product-service orientation adopted in traditional
strategic plans [34]. This new philosophy provides a framework for the improvement of mutual
cooperation among all members of the university community in order to achieve the strategic
goals. Moreover, the institution is perceived as a social agent and it is assumed to be transparent,
responsible and value-creating. The university’s stakeholders are perceived as a target towards which
institutional policies are directed, thus increasing their commitment to the university goals and a sense
of organizational unity. The support of stakeholders and their willingness to participate is essential
if this vision is to be achieved. There is little doubt that the resulting plan is undoubtedly enriching,
since each group brings a unique perspective to the strategic planning process. Once the approach
had been outlined, the vice chancellors suggested a few initial ideas for discussion in joint working
sessions and in-depth interviews, resulting in a first draft of the Strategic Plan. A general diagram
describing this phase is depicted in Figure 1.
STAGE I: GESTATION
SEED DEVELOPMENT CONSENSUS
PHILOSOPHY VICE-CHANCELLOR GOVERNING BOARD
AND BACKBONE ROUNTABLE
STRUCTURE STRATEGIC PLAN
THEMATIC
VICE-CHANCELLORS SESSIONS
INDIVIDUAL
GOVERNING BOARD INTERVIEWS
VICE-DEANS OF STRATEGIC GOALS,
STATEGY & QUALITY STRATEGIC LINES AND
ACTIONS
GENERAL
DIRECTORS
1st Strategic Plan
Proposal
1st Strategic Plan
Version
Figure 1. Strategic Planning Process (1st stage).
3.2. Stage II: Consultation and Participation
The second stage began by creating awareness and promoting open debate and reflection under
the heading of “Open Workshops on Strategic Planning”. A general scheme of the process followed
for the consultation and participation stage is shown in Figure 2. The first of these workshops brought
together various vice-chancellors, deans, directors of schools and directors of departments; the second
gathered the heads of the different administrative departments and directorates. In addition, three key
round tables were organized for the primary university stakeholders: administrative staff, teaching
and research staff, and students and graduates. As Axelsson et al. [35] suggested that understanding
different stakeholders’ expectations is also crucial in order to prepare and anchor changes in e-service
development and implementation through information and training. All stakeholders possess knowledge
and expertise that can provide valuable input when developing e-services [36]. Consequently, in allSustainability 2020, 12, 1826 7 of 13
these working sessions, which were conducted by experts of the UNESCO Chair in Higher Education
Management [37], our community discussed, and agreed upon, important elements of the new strategic
plan, such as the university mission, vision and shared values. The main competitive advantages of
our university were also considered during the debates. Once identified, the strategic objectives were
reformulated in order to make appropriate use of, maintain, or even create these unique advantages,
seeking the features which make our university unique [38].
STAGE II: CONSULTATION AND PARTICIPATION
CONSULTATION PARTICIPATION
1st Opened 2nd Opened
WORKSHOP on WORKSHOP on
Strategic Planning Strategic Planning STAKEHOLDERS’
ROUNDTABLES:
Students & Graduates
Vice-Chancellors, General Administrative Staff
Teaching & Research Staff
Deans, Director of Directors and
School and Head of
Directors of the Administrative
Departments Areas ON-LINE PLATFORM
OPEN GOVERNMENT
INITIATIVE
MISION -VISION -SHARED VALUES-GOALS, STRATEGIC LINES AND ACTIONS
Figure 2. Strategic Planning Process (2nd stage).
In addition to the two open workshops and three round tables, we also conducted in-depth
interviews on a sample of the university director board applying the sequential procedure described
by Creswell in [39]. First, we invited to participants to attend in-depth interviews. As a methodological
support for data collection, we carry out a semi-structured interview, where respondents are asked
about relevant aspects to ensure an effective strategic plan in the university. With respect to the data
collection, audio recordings corresponding to 12 interviews were made. The average duration of
each interview was about 30 min. All interviews have to be treated and validated within a week.
Thus, a transcript of each interview was sent to each participant to make the necessary corrections or
clarifications. Next, all recordings were transcribed and analyzed using the MAXQDA data analysis
software [40]. It is a powerful tool for textual analysis based on qualitative data. The methods used in
MAXQDA are based on the methodology of social research, especially for grounded theory, qualitative
content analysis, field research methods, ethnographic methods and socio-economic research models.
Later, we applied the coding guide of Tesch [41] for the qualitative data analytic process and grouped
the data by assigning the coding nodes. At this stage of the analysis, the issues that received the most
attention during interviews and the most common concepts and ideas emerged. Finally, the process
ends with an interpretation. For that purpose, the opinions of the interviewees were compared and
contrasted, giving rise to the main results and findings.
After this, the draft of the strategic plan was presented to the university community and society
in general by means of an online platform in order to promote participation, debate and consultation.
This platform was based on UserVoice and Wordpress software.Sustainability 2020, 12, 1826 8 of 13
This online platform was active throughout one moth in order to receive the opinions and votes
of all the participants. These proposals were analyzed and shortlisted prior to the drafting of the final
version for their inclusion in the strategic plan. These final versions aim to reflect the expectations
of our community as widely as possible way. This is the first attempt to bring our institution closer
to the principles of open government, an endeavor which the regional government of Andalusia
has wholeheartedly supported. It is an innovative initiative aimed at promoting new participatory
dynamics and collaborative work based on the operation of technological tools. Comments shared on
the platform are moderated according to the established terms of service.
It must be taken into account that in an initiative with a maximum level of openness, that is to
say third level, the power of decision and execution of the government action, which is object of the
initiative, is no longer to be shared with citizens, but rather it is returned completely to them. It should
be clearly noted that in this pilot experience, the final decision on the proposals that are incorporated
or not into the strategic plan is made by the government team. However, there is a possibility to reach
the third level, called delegation, in the execution stage of the actions programmed in the strategic plan
by means of working groups. One of the objectives of this initiative is to promote the cross-cutting
development of the plan itself, favoring the constitution of working groups around the objectives and
actions. If this degree of commitment is reached by the university community and these groups are
finally created, the level of openness will be a level three of delegation, being the action or programmed
actions executed by the working groups.
3.3. Stage III: Review and Approval
During one month, the governing board analyzed all the proposals set forth by the university
community during the consultation and participation stages in order to prepare the final version of
the strategic plan. Finally, three months later, the document was presented for approval before the
university senate.
Finally, the approved strategic plan consists of four objectives deployed in twenty-four actions that
affect students and graduates and are related to academic training, employability, entrepreneurship
and internationalization. For the professors and researchers, four objectives divided into fourteen
actions related to the incorporation of talent through new researchers, the attraction of financial
resources and internationalization were set out. Administration and services staff were the target
of four objectives split into twenty-two actions related to productivity, innovation and management
efficiency evaluated by means of user satisfaction. Finally, as a novelty, the university board of directors
appeared as internal stakeholders, for which a strategic objective composed of four actions related to
institutional commitment, internal communication and co-responsibility was established.
3.4. Stage IV: Monitoring
Once the strategic plan was approved, the online platform for the annual monitoring of the
strategic plan is launched again to the whole university community so they can openly rate, comment
and vote the values reached by the performance indicators (both qualitative and quantitative)
corresponding to short term actions taken during the first year of implementation. In this first
follow-up annual report, 91 actions have been assessed by the university community through the
online platform, receiving 825 votes and obtained an average score of 3.5 out of 5. Two actions should
be highlighted: “Achieving budget balance” and “Diversification and increase of funding sources”.
Both of them have been rated with maximum score, 5 out of 5 (very good) and depend on the university
general manager. Such actions framed within the strategy “Establish measures of budgetary balance”,
contribute to ensure sufficient funding to the institution that permits long-term sustainability, promotes
transparency and accountability and strengthens our vocation of public service. Moreover, the “Third
Sector Project: A Program to promote research, training and action on participation, inclusion and
social commitment”, was given the same rating, 5 out of 5. The distribution of rating obtained by the
91 actions assessed is shown in the Figure 3.Sustainability 2020, 12, 1826 9 of 13
Very Very Bad Bad
Good Good 1% 22%
34% 3%
Fair
40%
Figure 3. Rating distribution for the actions assessed.
4. Results
This paper describes the application of an innovative and successful open government practice to
the university’s strategic planning process. The key principles of the open government philosophy are
transparency, openness, participation and collaboration. In this regard, we have applied technological
tools (UserVoice software and Wordpress) in the design of an online platform in order to involve
not only the university’s primary (students, teachers, researchers and administrative staff) but also
secondary stakeholders (firms, institutions, suppliers, etc.), which can now contribute with their
proposals and votes to the achievement of the university’s strategic goals.
This online platform was active over the course of one month so that all the proposals for the
new strategic plan could be received and voted on openly. In its first month of existence, the online
platform received 3269 visits and 1875 new visitors. Around 100 proposals (actions) were uploaded
and distributed among seven strategic goals. Most of these proposals have been openly discussed
and voted by 204 registered users. With this exercise, the expectations and demands of the university
community were taken into account, and 65% of them have been incorporated into the final version
of the strategic plan. This has created a more consensual strategic framework and also increased the
stakeholders’ commitment to the university goals and a sense of organizational unity. The success of
the initiative was demonstrated by the wide consensus shown by the university senate: 52 votes for,
0 against and 2 blank.
The open government philosophy has been also applied to the annual monitoring of the strategic
plan. In the follow-up report for the first year of the strategic plan implementation, 91 actions have
been openly assessed by the university community through the online platform, receiving 825 votes
and obtained an average score of 3.5 out of 5. In addition to these results, it is necessary to highlight
the change of role of the university community, moving from a mere spectator to an active agent of the
development of the strategic plan, as a main result derived from this initiative. The method followed
in the participatory process of drawing up the strategic plan promotes the strengthening of the feeling
of belonging to the university community and the alignment with the objectives defined in the plan.
In the implementation phase of the plan, transversal working groups around strategic lines or
defined actions were established, in which people from different areas, services and levels voluntarily
participated. In this way, the rigidity of the hierarchical boundaries, which supposes a brake on
innovation and an obstacle to the efficient fulfillment of institutional purposes, could be dispelled.
From the in-depth interviews conducted on a sample of university director board, we find some
consensus regarding the key drivers in such strategic planning process. In particular, the strategic
plan must be assumed by the entire community, for which the participation and involvement of the
stakeholders is crucial. This idea is aligned with Naidoo and Wu [42], who argue that an organization
must bring on key board members to commit to the project and achieve strategic objectives. The strategic
plan must have a simple structure, be clear and concise, so that it is easily communicable and intelligible.
Once the strategy has been formulated, managers need to translate it into clearly communicableSustainability 2020, 12, 1826 10 of 13
objectives and measures for all actions. From there, it is linked to the objectives related to the critical
processes and, ultimately, to the people, technology, organizational climate and culture necessary
for the execution of successful strategies [43]. The monitoring of the strategic plan facilitates the
continuous reassessment and accountability to society. As Wakim and Bushnell [44] argue, monitoring
and measurement through indicators that respond directly to strategic objectives is essential. On the
other hand, strategic objectives must be economically feasible as otherwise they would become a utopia
leading to frustration. However, most of the interviewees assume a higher level of demand with
fewer resources [45]. Moreover, the principles of open government (collaboration, participation and
transparency) generate new work dynamics in higher education institutions, turning universities into a
social agent. According to Ramírez-Alujas [1], government and public services must be open to public
scrutiny and to the supervision of society (transparency). Thus, spaces for dialogue, participation and
open to the necessary collaboration have to be established to find better solutions to public problems.
In this sense, and in the field of higher education institutions, Boyko [46] points out that the university
governing board have the challenge of functioning as a link between all institutional levels such as
university, faculties and departments, and thus, be able to achieve the principles of open government.
At the same time, the main causes hindering the optimal deployment of the strategic direction
have been detected based on the in-depth interviews and the historical experience of the university in
previous strategic plans.
Namely, the low applicability and execution of previously designed strategic plans literally
expressed by several interviewees as “the main problem is that we do not have an information system for
management, that is, we do not have historical indicators or seed values that serve as a reference for setting future
objective values”; skepticism about its utility and feasibility in the context of the crisis, expressed as
“with the current situation we have, nobody believes. We cannot foresee what will happen next year and if there is
going to be money or if the budget is going to fall . . . and without these forecasts we cannot create”; the lack of
economic, material and human resources that make it possible the fulfillment of strategic plan. At this
point, Combs et al. [47] highlight that resources are really strategic when they are able to generate
sustainable competitive advantages over time; the failure in the dissemination and communication
of the strategic plan in order to raise awareness of the entire university community; the lack of
maintenance over time of the general strategic objectives, motivated by changes in the governing board
at the university, expressed as “the strategy of a higher education institution must be long-term. However,
the strategic plans are usually linked to rector’s mandates. Thus, a new rector enters and does not finish the
previous projects because he/she wants to do something different. This leads to a constant drift”.
These results connect with [48], where the main causes that make strategies and plans fail are a
bad execution, the lack of understanding of the future and sometimes of the present, and the lack of
consideration of the sources of uncertainty outside the strategy or plan itself.
5. Conclusions
In this work a web platform has been developed with the aim of promoting the participation
and collaboration of all university’s stakeholders in the design and follow up of the strategic plan.
The introduction of such technological innovation provides with a much more sustainable strategic
planning process within the university because it promotes open discussion, participation, reflection
and learning. Moreover, the principles of open government encourage a new collaborative workflow
and the identification of stakeholders with the corporate goals, thereby enhancing their commitment
to the fulfillment of the strategic plan.
Following the phases of the public policy cycle of the LUDO model, the initiative carried out in
this work was firstly designed. For this purpose, the main tasks have been to discuss, write proposals
and to design solutions. To do this, through the platform of consultation and open participation all
members of the university community and citizens have freely formulated their proposals, as well
as have assessed and commented on the proposals put forward by other people. Thus, a public
debate has been opened on the design of the strategic planning of the university, at the same timeSustainability 2020, 12, 1826 11 of 13
that concrete proposals have been collected on the actions to be developed, written directly by the
university community itself and the citizenship.
In this way it has been possible to design solutions that have allowed to achieve the strategic
objectives in a collaborative way, involving and strengthening the commitment of the university
community. In addition to the comments to the published proposals, the platform has also allowed
suggestions on the participatory process, so that the initiative can be improved in the design of the
next strategic plan of the University.
Results reported show the successful pilot experience launched in the university, which received
around one hundred online proposals, all of them monitored and evaluated by the whole university
community with a grade of 3.5 out of 5. The strategic plan is then considered a useful instrument for the
management of higher education institutions, especially in contexts of uncertainty. The internalization
of the strategic objectives by the entire university community and their commitment to achieve them,
depends on their degree of participation and involvement in the strategic planning process. One of
the mistakes discovered thanks to the historical experience in previous strategic plans of the reference
university, is to consider the strategic plan as an objective itself, rather than an essential process to
bring the institution to fruition. On the other hand, the implementation and monitoring depends
ultimately on the university board of directors, as their experience, motivation and institutional
commitment contribute to the success of the strategic management, creating competitive advantages
for the university. As future works, the knowledge acquired with this initiative will be transferred to
co-create other important documents in the university such as legislation to regulate the teaching and
research activity of professors and management activity of the public managers.
Author Contributions: C.M.-C. implemented the web platform, designed the experimental setting and carried out
the practice in the university. A.T. designed the web platform and participated in the design of the experimental
setting. J.M.F.-D. conceived the idea, leaded the project, and drafted the manuscript. All authors have read and
agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Acknowledgments: This work has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities
under projects TIN2017-88209-C2-1-R.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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