OUR METHODOLOGY

What is Digital Lobbying?

The term Digital Lobbying (Carro, Di Mario 2020, The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Interest Groups, Lobbying and Public Affairs) refers to an innovative way for private and public subjects and organizations to deal with their public affairs activities using digital tools.

Thanks to tools based on strategic knowledge management, open data analytics and artificial intelligence, it is now possible to collect and analyze the many data available inside and outside individual organizations in order to build effective, transparent and measurable (ROI) public affairs, advocacy and lobbying actions from a strategic reputation and positioning perspective.

We have integrated these tools into our digital platform KMIND – Knowledge Management for Public Affairs.

Managing a firm’s external relations is a competitive differentiating factor that helps organizations in putting in place the most effective strategy to achieve their goals, investing in competence and reputation. 

From these premises, arises the need for a re-design of business processes that also includes institutional relations and public affairs. In fact, within these activities there is a huge intangible heritage that even today, in many organizations, is relegated to the “oral tradition” and is not duly shared and valued.

Digitizing public affairs activities can in fact offer to all organizations immersed in complex contexts, qualitative and quantitative information to be used to support the decisions of top management of the organizations, as well as a more effective management of their “relational capital”. 

Furthermore, an approach based on Digital Lobbying allows to manage gaps in information flows (structural holes) in a changing economic and legislative context, fragmented into different decision-making and institutional levels.

In fact, the application of innovative technologies in this field increases the ability of organizations to make fast and effective decisions, based on measurable indicators and data-driven approaches.

This methodology implies a change in both processes and instruments, but it is first of all a transformation that involves people and organizations, enabling them to manage complex information more effectively, also focusing on transparency and coordinated sharing of information and representation of interests activities.

Digitization involves all the classic phases of the Public Affairs process, from the search for information to the implementation of action, up to the evaluation of results.

According to our model, it is possible to think of Digital Lobbying as a management process that takes place in 6 phases: Monitoring, Analysis, Strategic Evaluations, Positioning, Action and Evaluation of results. 

The 6 phases of Digital Lobbying advance along a rapid growth process which, on the basis of the incremental acquisition of data and knowledge, nowadays assisted by the resort to innovative technologies, leads to positioning and action, converging towards the evaluation of achieved results. 

Within each phase, several stages can be identified, which represent increasingly refined moments of knowledge transformation thanks to the contribution of multiple specialists and advanced digital technologies.

 

Discover more:

  1. Il Lobbying diventa Digital: come gestire le attività di Public Affairs in tempi di Crisis Management
  2. A public affairs platform for the analysis of the liberalization process in the italian electricity market
  3. Digital Lobbying Book
  4. L’era della Democrazia Digitale
  5. “Digital Lobbying” (Marialessandra Carro e Claudio Di Mario, 2020), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Interest Groups, Lobbying and Public Affairs. In pubblicazione.
  6. Digital Lobbying. Gestire strategicamente le relazioni istituzionali attraverso smart data e strumenti digitali. (Marialessandra Carro e Claudio Di Mario. Prefazione di Alberto Bitonti). In pubblicazione.