MAREVA is a successful and innovative methodology to assess the value of public sector transformation projects. This project complies with the priority on e-government efficiency and effectiveness included in the i-2010 Action Plan It helps administrations in prioritizing initiatives, managing them (evaluation of alternatives, commitment of project leaders on concrete objectives…) and building knowledge for further projects to optimize the value of projects portfolio MAREVA has been launched in 2005 for the French e-government Agency and has now been rolled out for about 100 e-governments initiatives in 10 French government ministries and in several other public organizations, including Quebec government.

Policy Context

MAREVA has been developed in parallel with the implementation of a new French law on public finances (the “LOLF”) changing the French State’s budgetary processes and performance management. The LOLF is a paradigm shift for the French public sector from a resource-based budgeting to a result-based budgeting approach requiring tools and methods to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of public sectors policies and programs. MAREVA contributes to serve the purpose of shifting public administrations toward a result-based management of budgets, as it helps provide a more-balanced assessment of costs and benefits, value and risk as a way to better prioritize and manage project portfolios.

Description of target users and groups

MAREVA has been developed for any administration that wishes to better manage its transformation projects portfolio. The methodology has already been used by more than 10 French Government ministries and by several public organizations like the National Social Security Office, the Strasbourg Urban Community, the French Farming Mutual Insurance. It has been rolled out on about 100 governmental transformation projects, including major e-government projects (such as Copernic system for tax online services, public services portal, infrastructure and middle-office projects). MAREVA can be considered first as an analysis method, then as a decision-making and communication tool for key actors of governmental transformation projects; it targets in particular decision makers, project leaders, information system departments and impacted Departments. The use of MAREVA will be widely developed in the forthcoming years. In particular, the French State's Budget Ministry is going to request in annual budgetary processes a MAREVA analysis for most important governmental transformation project, in line with LOLF approach (structuring for the whole French government). MAREVA could thus be used in the forthcoming years by hundreds of decision makers, project leaders, information system departments and impacted Departments.

Description of the way to implement the initiative

The project management approach followed different steps : The relationship of DGME (detailer) with ministries is based on trust. Mareva was tested internally and the deployed depending on willingness of ministries and other public actors Internally : we test on 2 pilot projects, -Copernic: a € 1bn program over 10 years and Helios: a € 100m program over 4 years-. After We then rolled out MAREVA on 40 transformation projects of the French e-government Program Adele. In order to generalize Mareva, we help In 2007, 10 French Government Ministries to test it in their own context, . The objective is to let ministries be in contact with the method to be convinced and to allow correspondents to talk about Mareva internally. Another partnership was found with budget direction as they ask for justification of expenses, in particular, to use Mareva method for information systems expenses. The specific partnership with Quebec was very useful as it allows to give external perspective to the project. To go farer, there are two choices for public sector to use the methode : to allow internally resources and skill for projects or to externalize this work. Multi-channel issues: Up to now MAREVA has been deployed on 2 Excel tools that are in free access for any administrations on the DGME website. We are currently considering migrating from our temporary Excel tool to a web-based solution that will provide additional functionalities and ease the roll out and the consolidation of the MAREVA methodology. We are also converting MAREVA under OpenOffice to ensure license-free access All documents (pedagogical and methodological) are available on Internet. Not specific demand is required. These resources are published under Creative Commons license in order to allow every public actor to use it freely. Private sector can use them in their own context or to work with public administration. More informations at : http://synergies.modernisation.gouv.fr/rubrique.php?id_rubrique=186

Main results, benefits and impacts

MAREVA has already been rolled out on about 100 governmental transformation projects in more than 10 French government Departments and in several public organizations. The methodology has received an excellent welcome and its results have been widely communicated within the French Government and abroad. In particular it has been rolled out on about 40 transformation projects of the French e-government Project Management Office; it enabled to highlight and to follow-up the realization of the 1,1 billion Euros total benefits promised by these projects. Another example: when planning to launch a new contract for shared mainframes, the French e-government Project Management Office compared different scenarios with MAREVA to select the scenario with an optimized value. Helped by a dedicated training plan organized early 2007, French government Ministries are convinced by the benefits of the MAREVA methodology and progressively plan to roll it out on all their transformation projects (example: The French Agriculture Ministry) Decision makers and project managers have told us they appreciated the MAREVA approach for the following reasons: -It is an innovative approach to define the value of a project by integrating ROI but also Public Sector’s specificities such as productivity issues, impacts on citizens and public servants, organization’s complexity, necessity... -It is a unique method to evaluate and compare many different projects (infrastructure projects, internal transformation projects, e-services…) -it is a powerful tool to facilitate discussion between project team members (functional and IT), decision-makers and contractors -It is a way to get project teams be committed to concrete objectives enabling to better manage the project (early identification of project risks / pitfalls enabling early decisions) and to federate teams on common objectives -It is a way to get impacted Departments be committed to concrete savings objectives (€ or productivity) also enabling to early identify required action plans to secure their achievement -The methodology enables to follow-up the value of a project at each stage of its life cycle: beforehand, to contribute to the decision-making process, during the project to better manage it (resources justification, choice between alternatives, corrective actions plan) and afterwards, to contribute to the experience gained -The synthetic project value report is highly pertinent (on a representative number of projects) and the tools are easy to use, even without training (in 2005, more than 30 projects were assessed in 2 weeks time after a 3 hours kick-off meeting) MAREVA has been widely praised by politicians and by the international community -« MAREVA precisely assesses financial impacts of projects on the State and the public sector and also evaluates impacts on citizens » Renaud Dutreil, French former Minister of the Public Function and the State Reform, April 2005 -« MAREVA serves the purpose of shifting public administrations toward a more-balanced assessment of costs, value and risk as a way to better prioritize and manage project portfolios » Gartner Group, August 2005 Innovation: While value analysis methodologies are usually considered as very complex and too detailed, MAREVA succeeds in providing a meaningful one-page synthetic report easily understandable by any actor of a transformation project (from decision-makers to project leaders, executives, …). Moreover, specific tools were deployed to make sure any government transformation project could be evaluated in a very simple manner and with common and standard evaluation criterions (holistic approach). MAREVA assesses the value of a project through 5 analysis grids and restores the value on a five-axis radar graph: -State Financial Value: it enforces the Return on Investment key indicators (Net Present Value, Internal Rate of Return, break-even point) comparing project development and operation expenses with the financial benefits of the project in terms of productivity, efficiency gains, resulting economies, increased revenue... -Public Service Social & Operational Value: it assesses the qualitative impacts of the project on public functioning government, such as employee satisfaction, improvement of service efficiency, … as well as financial impacts on the broader public sector (like social and health organization) -Direct Customer Value: it assesses project benefits for private users (citizens, companies, associations…) in qualitative terms (quality of services…) and quantitative terms (such as monetary and time savings) -Project Necessity: it approximates the level of risk without the project (articulation with other key projects, technology obsolescence, political and legal obligation) -Risk: at last, MAREVA also makes a quick assessment of project risk mandatory (project management, legal issues, technical, and deployment capability)

Return on investment

Return on investment: Not applicable / Not available

Track record of sharing

MAREVA has influenced many other initiatives in France and in other countries. -Mareva is an example of good practice. From the beginning it was conceived to be shared. It’s open enough to be adapted to different context and it’s an example of efficacy of public expenditure as administration only spends once on a common need -In Quebec, 70 e-government projects have been launched in 2004-2005. Owing to the large budgets involved in these projects, the auditor-general of Quebec requested that the Government of Quebec justifies the relevancy of e-government projects. The Government of Quebec tested MAREVA on 7 pilot projects in mid-2006: At the end of the test, members of project teams were very satisfied with the methodology (95% of them considered that MAREVA was useful to assess the value of their projects). The Government of Quebec has now decided to use MAREVA to assess the value of all of its e-governement projects Moreover, the DGME is currently in discussion with other EU and OCDE countries very interested (Germany, Portugal, Monaco, Algeria, …) to introduce them the methodology.

Lessons learnt

Assess the context and adapt MAREVA to the context if necessary: -Assess the maturity of the organization (diagnosis) -Articulate the principles of value analysis with the strategy, the organization and the project management processes of the organization Take time for Change management: -Test the method with pilots -Prepare and deploy a training program and a communication plan -Involve decision makers in the deployment of the methodology Simplicity and efficiency for performance management: -Use the MAREVA methodology to facilitate discussion between project team members (functional and IT), decision-makers and contractors and to get them be committed on concrete objectives

Scope: National