Driving force
The provincial authority can be an important driving force for corporate social responsibility. The province plays a number of roles in this case: as an initiator and executor of policy, as a competent authority, as a contact point for citizens and businesses, as an employer, and as a principal for infrastructure. Authorities are expected to set a good example. The issue for the authorities is often: what does corporate social responsibility mean for us?

Special methodology for provinces
In order to clearly show the sustainability performance of a provincial organisation, BECO developed the P4-scan (P4 stands for province, people, planet & profit). This scan is a refinement of the Strategic Sustainability Scan that was developed earlier by BECO.

Insight: internal and external
The P4-scan is a scan that provides provinces with an insight into their performance levels on all aspects of sustainability that are important for running the province (internally and externally). First of all, the scan gives an insight into what corporate social responsibility involves. Secondly, it shows which efforts the organisation has already made in the area of the three dimensions of sustainability (economic, social and environmental efforts). In the third place the scan provides an insight into how the most relevant interested parties or stakeholders assess these efforts and what they expect from the organisation.

Support and potential for improvement
The P4-scan is an excellent tool for acquiring support, increasing awareness, and identifying concrete items for improvement. Which points are going well and where are there gaps? Where are there risks involved and what are the opportunities? Since the scan looks in from the outside, it creates an image of how the surrounding world perceives the provincial organisation.

Internationally recognised guidelines
The P4-scan methodology is based on internationally recognized guidelines, standards, such as the EFQM model for quality, Global Reporting Initiative and the Social Accountability 8000 guidelines for the social and environmental aspects, and the ISO 14001 for the environment. The methodology also fits in with the AccountAbility 1000 guidelines.
The scan is divided into three parts:

• Carrying out the P4-scan
• Stakeholder consultation and analysis
• Setting up a sustainability agenda

1. Carrying out the P4-scan
The core of the P4-scan consists of 12 modules designed for the provincial organisation: strategy & legal affairs, support services, personnel & HRM, ICT, finance, purchasing, communication and PR, economic affairs, infrastructure, traffic and transport, spatial planning, welfare, care, & culture, and environment, water & soil. The scan is a cross section and exposes the inter-relations. Each module includes interviews with management. During these one-and-a-half hour interviews a questionnaire specifically developed for the provincial authorities is filled in. Afterwards the responses are analysed in a computer model and compared with best practices. This creates a picture of the relative performance of the organisation, where individual points for improvements come to light more clearly.

2. Stakeholder consultation and analysis
In consultation with the province a list of stakeholders is put together: individual people, institutes, companies and social organisations that have special interests with regard to the functioning of the province. Examples as such are municipalities, a residents association, an industrial association, the Chamber of Commerce, an agricultural organisation, a water board, environmental NGOs or other interest groups. The employees of the provincial government are also important stakeholders. The various stakeholders are asked what they expect from the province and how they view the province’s performance on various sustainability aspects. The stakeholder analysis can often bring to light surprising differences between the performance of the province and the assessment by the stakeholders.

3. Setting up a sustainability agenda
After completing the first two steps, all the data is processed and the results are presented graphically in the ‘mirror image’. In the concluding meeting the results are fed back to the managers that were involved in the scan. The results and the background data are explained and the participants discuss together which improvement steps are possible and how to tackle these. This leads to a strategic sustainability agenda with which the province could get cracking in concrete terms.

“The P4-scan carried out in Gelderland identified topics upon which we were able to act. Many of the improvement points already exist in the implementation plans, but now they receive more attention. An important conclusion that we came to was that we do more than we show. In many areas we do much more than people are aware of and this is a pity because we do not use these examples to the benefit of the province. I wholeheartedly recommend this tool to fellow entities, especially my colleagues in other provinces. Folks, do set up this scan and participate. You can then benchmark your results as well.” Coen Volp, Director of the Department for Road, Traffic and Transport in the Dutch Province of Gelderland

The P4-scan was developed in cooperation with the Province of Gelderland and with the financial support from SenterNovem.

Examples

• The Dutch Province of Gelderland was the first province that used the P4-scan to conduct an integral screening with the theme ‘sustainability’. Twelve policy areas and organisation components were defined to show how the province practices sustainability and where improvements could be made.