# A Sustainability Management Model for Local Government: An Explanatory Study
## 4 Sustainability Cycle in Local Authorities: A Case Study
Moreover, alongside the dimensions of sustainability mentioned above, this model also considers the financial dimension ([PERSON] and [PERSON] 2017; [PERSON] and [PERSON] 2018) of sustainability. This is defined as the availability of financial resources to be used rationally to achieve the institutional objectives of public sector organizations. In other words, financial sustainability can be considered as the ability of the government to provide public services (maintaining or increasing social welfare) at a quantitative and qualitative level through a rational use of available financial resources that allows the tax burden to be contained (primary source of financial resources in public administration), without compromising the satisfaction of the needs of future generations. The model considers financial sustainability as a transversal element of the environmental, social, economic and cultural dimensions of sustainability. Therefore, financial aspects are considered here as elements to be measured for each of the other four dimensions of sustainability, in order to define the overall sustainability profile of a local authority. **The phases of the sustainability management cycle and integration with the documents used by local authorities**: The model tested does not stop at measuring sustainability results in the final phase of the financial year but rather considers the entire sustainability cycle. With reference to the integration of sustainability processes with the planning and control cycle and documents used by local authorities, from the interviews the decision to integrate sustainability aspects into the Executive Management Plan (EMP) unified with the Performance Plan (henceforth EMP/PP) from a documentary point of view emerged. In the integrated approach followed in this model, the EMP/PP was considered the pivotal document around which the sustainability planning/management/control cycle revolves because:  
* It is an instrument that, by its very nature, is a programming document that contains both a reference to strategic objectives (of political origin) and the identification of operational objectives;
* It is a document that, in addition to fulfilling a programming function, is also created for control purposes. It is a document that stems, on the one hand, from an organic unification of the EMP that is used in the final phase for the evaluation of management and, on the other, of the Performance Plan that is the basis for the drafting of the year-end Performance Report in which the degree of achievement of the strategies of the local authority is measured;
* It is a document that, if correctly interpreted and implemented, must lay the foundations for a management phase that, starting from the definition of objectives, prepares processes and tools to collect the data and information necessary for the subsequent control phase;
* It is a document that provides a link to the accounting data contained in the budget and therefore also allows for the consideration of financial aspects related to the sustainability objectives of the municipality. **Elements of sustainability measurement**: The model proposed here is based on four elements used to assess the sustainability profile of the local authority. These elements are quantified by indicators which, in most cases, relate what has been planned to the result actually achieved. Therefore, for each element, a value expressed in percentage terms is arrived at, and the average of these values--thus considering equivalently the weight of each element analyzed--leads to the measurement of the level of sustainability (environmental, social, economic and cultural) of the local authority. It is important to highlight that, in this case study, the measurement of sustainability elements, as well as the data collection to support the measurement process, is fundamentally based on Excel spreadsheets.