Prioritisation of public investments in social infrastructures using multicriteria value analysis and decision conferencing: a case study

Not-for-profit private organisations that provide social services to children, the elderly and the disabled apply for financial support to develop or to renew their social infrastructures, through the Portuguese Institute for Social Welfare. In the context of scarce financial resources, the Institute decision-makers felt the need to adopt an improved “rationality” in resource allocation, in order to increase transparency and to ensure that the collective best use is made of a limited budget. This paper describes the socio-technical process followed in building a multicriteria value model, under a decision conferencing framework in which participation and interaction among decision-actors were key features in the development of the three main phases of problem structuring, evaluation and prioritisation.