International Best practice:Citizen’s Portal, Lisbon

Contact Persons & Place:

• Prof Luis T. Magalhaes, President, UMIC, Knowledge Society Agency, Ministry of Science, Technology, and Higher Education, Taguspark, Edificio Inovacao 1, 2⁰ deg , Sala 124, 2740–122 Porto Salvo – Portugal, Tel: +351 211 119 600
  
  

• Ms. Anabela Pedroso, President, AMA, Agency for the Public Services Reform, Presidency of the Council of Ministers, R. Abranches Ferrao N.⁰ 10, 3⁰ G, 1600-001 Lisboa, Portugal

Background

The Citizen's Portal (www.portaldocidadao.pt) is the central digital channel for public services launched in the first quarter of 2004. The Citizen's Portal offers more than 800 citizen-oriented 24/7 services provided by 125 public administration bodies. It is a well known brand, recognized by more than 30% of the Portuguese population. More than half a million users access it on a regular basis, with 3 million page views per month originated from more than 33 countries of all world continents.

The Citizen's Portal is regularly classified among the ten best Portuguese sites (KPBI30, Internet performance Portuguese index, January 2005). The development of the Citizen's Portal has been continuous. An electronic payments platform was introduced at the end of 2005 allowing for different forms of payments, including the issuing of payment orders which can be completed through the unified ATM network widely available in Portugal or even without leaving home or office for people who have home banking, in this case allowing full process dematerialization of requests. The services provided to citizens will be further enhanced by the use of the electronic Citizen’s Card which was launched in February of 2007 in the Azores Islands. This would be an example for India to replicate, especially given its vast population and its spread in the remote areas of the country.

Lisbon is the capital and largest city of Portugal. It has a municipal population of 564,477 in 84.8 km², while theLisbon Metropolitan Area in total has around 2.8 million inhabitants, and 3.34 million people live in the broader agglomeration of Lisbon Metropolitan Region. Due to its economic output,standard of living, andmarket size, the Greater Lisbon sub-region is considered the second most important financial and economic center of the Iberian Peninsula. The Lisbon region is the wealthiest region inPortugal and it is well above the European Union's GDP per capita average

The Portal of the Citizen constitutes a single entry point for electronic public services.  It facilitates the relationship between citizens and the Portuguese State providing a single channel of privileged access to services provided by the Public Administration. The citizens perform from the portal on the online services provided by the Public Administration.A partir do os cidadãos poderão executar alguns dos serviços disponibilizados pela Administração Pública, assim como consultar informações ou conteúdos diversos.as well as consult and seek information and advice. The portal also helps in linking up with other sites where one can directly interact with the service provider.

There exists a major digital divide in Portugal.  The group who are IT users represnt a small number and are even less than the European average of IT users. If one observes the total internet users, one can easily see that 90 percent of them are people who are in higher education, about 81 percent are with secondary education and 24 percent are among other people. Out the 24 percent about three fourths are adults (>16 years in age) who hardly have any secondary education. The present picture seems better in comparison to the earlier proportions of 1975, where only 7 percent of the internet users had higher education and 10 percent were with secondary education. Rest were either illiterate or 4th graders.

This was iniatially started by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education under the Secretary of State. The Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC) with Prof Luis T Magalhaes as the President, took the responsibility of mobilizing the information and Knowledge Society and connecting Portugal during 2004-2005. Currently the responsibility is shared jointly by the Secretary of State for the Administrative Modernization under the Ministry of the Presidency who have taken up the challenge of modernizing the services of the Public Administration process.

Technology Park,UMIC

With President, UMIC - Prof Lui

The new agency, called (AMA) – Agency of Administrative Modernization is headed by Ms. Anabela Pedroso as the President of AMA. According to the president, the meaning of AMA reflects the objective of this initiative. AMA in portuguese has two meanings - nanny and it also means to love someone. AMA has been trying to fulfill both the meanings of the word in true spirit. That is taking care of the Public Administration and also showering love and affection on the citizens.

AMA is the nodal agency for public administration. Numerous public institutes are included into it but are equipped with more autonomy to manage their projects.  AMA aims to translate the Citizen’s Portal into the ‘Yellow Pages of Public Administration’.

With President of AMA – Ms Annabela Pedrosa

Over the years the portal of the Citizen has been nurtured and blossomed into several independent good practices. Some of them have been discussed in the subsequent sections. The Citizen’s Portal also includes the Citizen Shop Management - which still exists physically in many sectors; the electronic component of administration - which has been expanding takes care to avoid duplication. There are a group of counters in the economy in order to  facilitate the companies. 

In addition there are various agencies that are looking into other projects which are important for e-governance. These include the dematerialization of e-journal, submission of projects with the help of PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) for validity of signatures, taxes, justice related to life of companies, the registration of trademark online, the sale of used cars and registration of ownership, the social security and employment through the central employment portal, development of electronic prescription for citizens in the area of health, e-procurement, e-invoice and others.   

Objectives

 The major objectives of this best practice initiative aims at achieving:

•        Social Inclusion

•        Education for All

•        Economic Development

•        Better Services of Public Administration

•        Development of e-Governance

The population is small and therefore the major objective has been to outsource develomental activities through private companies located in and outside the country and net them together.

Rationale

 The Citizen’s Portal is the access point in the internet which became extremely successful from 2005 onwards. In terms of benchmarking in Europe, its 4th in rank, for its availability and usability in internet and sophistication. This was a big jump over the earlier years where it used to occupy only the 13th or 14th rank.

Office of AMA

There are several important projects under the Citizen’s Portal which have played a significant role in transforming the lives of people.

• Citizen’s Card with an electronic Identification (e-ID): This is a major project which is currently being implemented and has been of immense use especially for senior citizens and touching the lives of several people located in the far flung areas.

• Interoperability Platform: This has enabled different public bodies who made a massive effort to modernise their services and put them online to come together at a common contact point creating a huge architecture of information data base. The Portuguese Public Administration through the Citizen’s Portal ensures the translation and recognition of different information systems through the platform for interoperability to the various institutions’ services. This places every public department at the citizen’s service, however, wherever and whenever she/he wants.

• Public e-Procurement Programme: This programme lauched in June, 2003 enabled the Public Administration to use the internet to make its routine purchases, thereby making the process simpler, more transparent and cheaper. This programme also helps in pushing business to adopt electronic business and trade practices ushering in modernisation, competitiveness and efficiency.  

Problem Addressed

The Citizen’s Portal is a popular service among people and can be documented under the following major services:

• The Citizen’s Portal helps in obtaining Certificates through the internet from anywhere in the world. There are approximately more than 50 countries covering several continents that are at present accessing the service.

Office of AMA

• It also provides 14 different services including official changing of addresses. The fourteen different services do not require the filling up of 14 different forms. Only one electronic form takes care of all the services. However this is not yet fully operationalized as some of the agencies require strong authentication of identity. Nevertheless the current projects are a witness to dramatic changes.  


• The access to one spot internet services is like an internet gateway to Public Administration, integration and unification. There are about 680 citizen services, such as taxis, social security, employment, education, etc.


• Another recent development introduced in 2007 is to organize information not department wise of the administration but by certain issues that revolve around the lives of citizens. It is basically the taxonomy of organizations. This includes marriage, deaths, births, recovering duplicate lost documents, etc. So now this is divided into two sections. First is the availability of advice on day to day problems in the lives of the citizen. For example if one needs to buy a house where should they go looking for it and so on. Second is the structure of the organization involving several administrative departments. This has proved to be easy for citizens to interact and seek advice.


• In 2006, a special package for electronic payment was introduced through the Citizen’s Portal. One could buy or make payment through credit card/ ATM card, after asking for a reference to be made in the ATM network. This has eased out several hardships faced by the citizens and has saved enormous time and effort.   

Participation of Local People

The participation of local people is ensured through the following:

• e-ID or the Citizen’s card is like a credit card containing biometric data such as picture, signature, fingertips, measurement of eyes which are all collected with the help of machine. It also carries two electronic digital signatures which are like certificates and can allow the citizen to officially sign. This was developed since 2005 but was launched only in Feb 2007. By July 2007 it had expanded all over the country. A total of 30,000 cards have been issued till date and it is expected that in another 5 to 7 years everyone would be in possession of this card. This is growing rapidly and the Portuguese citizen card is the third in rank after Belgium and Austria. The Portuguese cards are likely to surpass two million by 2008 covering one fifth of the total population. 

• Earlier for obtaining a citizen’s card, one needed to go online, download the form, print it out and then go to one of the counters for registration. AMA initiated the process where the Citizen Card could be applied online. The whole process from beginning till end could be done online conveniently. The five digit number creating a data base where each digit refers to Identification Number, Taxes, the Social Security number, Health and Voter ID. Currently the Voter’s ID number is not in use.

• Two certificates are also introduced within the Citizen Card for traveling within the Schenegen space. One pertains to authentication on the web; the second refers to the digital signature. One need not register again and again once one is already in the web. The 4 digit identification needs to be done only once for the necessary data base and then one can perform as many functions as required.  There is also a smart card which is a small chip on the left in golden with the necessary data base containing the electronic signature that could be used for signing officially. Displaying a cycle of confidence created at the back, the Citizen’s Card costs only 12 Euros the same as that of an identity Card while the government incurs an expenditure of six and a half euros. There is also a substantial saving in terms of dematerialization of paper and making of multiple cards for a single citizen. This necessarily would contribute to the sustainability of the project.

Accountability of Service Providers

There are provisions to lodge grievances by the Citizens both online as well as in complaint boxes available at counters. These are promptly attended to.                  

By 2009 it is expected to have 45 points and by 2030 it will get enhanced to 340 centers when all the municipal offices in Portugal will get connected.  For such an endeavor, technology becomes the most important supporting device. A multi channel platform was thus necessary to be created. The two major drivers of technology include: 

• The Interoperability platform

• e – ID also called as the Citizen’s Card

Basically the above two drivers maintain not only the accountability of the Service providers but also the overall management of the system ensuring participation of the citizens.

Speed & Ease of Service Delivery

Through the creation of a single point of contact, which would be common to everyone, the services enabled the citizens to avail their social security grant and health services sitting at home.

Thus Public Administration has been investing and focusing mostly on the development of ‘Citizen’s Shop of Second Generation’.

Usability of internet was also another important aspect in achieving the benefits. The simple use of internet which does not crash and which is user friendly needed to be introduced. So a system needed to be created with usability being the key factor for everyone to understand and learn.

Such a huge project is managed by only 400 persons who work for the Citizen’s Portal and maintain the system. 

Social Well Being

Portugal is one of the first countries in Europe to connect all schools to internet in 1997 and broad band service was introduced in all schools by 2006. A series of training programme are being imparted to adults who do not have secondary education. These are free and in fact some incentive is also provided to learn this programme. Training programme is also imparted by the industrial entrepreneurs. There are internet cafés available in various places where people are available to teach free of cost. Charity work in the villages is also encouraged keeping the ethos of the people inclusive policies.  Eventually about 10 million people will possess the Citizen’s Card through which they can have access to public service delivery.

Transparency

AMA’s effort to bring together the Central government and the State government onto a common platform through the Citizen’s Portal utilizing interoperability leads to transparency, an important initiative for best practice.

Interoperability platform is a critical technical government initiative for a common framework, which though not visible but allows interdepartmental communication and knowledge sharing among different departments of the government. The codification of data structure into a common format is usually a very expensive affair. Thus creating a common interoperability platform where modernization could be introduced without having to re-equip the whole existing system from scratch is an innovative idea. This kind of strategy has been used for the first time in the world and is a unique system. The project is being carefully followed by companies like the Microsoft, IBM, Sun Micro System, etc. Also the replicability of the project on other projects is carefully being studied by four contract companies such as Siemens, Accenture, Novabase and Microsoft.

In addition a new project was introduced in 2005 with the Public Administration, which was made autonomous for advice and for solving of problems. This is the most visible service. An enterprise can be added online in just one hour. The verification of documents is also done online in due course. Anybody who has a Citizen’s Card can open an enterprise subject to document verification. In case the concerned person does not posses a citizen card, he can open an enterprise through the help of a Portuguese lawyer, as all of them have electronic-ID card. This is something which is unique in the world. This system has been working very well and is currently being used by the vast majority of the new entrepreneurs (nearly 70%). Due to greater transparency, most of the small and medium entrepreneurs and some of the large entrepreneurs are also covered under this system. A total of about 1000 companies have already been created online.

Replicability

The features of the programmes have been so designed that it was easy to be replicated all over the World.

In answer to this major challenge, the Portuguese government has brought all the different commitments and goals together in one consolidated strategic plan known as the Simplex programme. It incorporates the vast Administrative and Legislative Simplification Programme designed to reduce bureaucracy, increase the State’s transparency and the Public Administration’s efficiency and also improve people’s relationship with public departments. Simplex depends heavily on the use of ICT, making replication easy and combines all concrete measures in areas which are the joint responsibility of various Ministries such as health, education, justice, and public finance, etc.

Partnership

he project involves both Central government and State governments. Moreover some of the Services of the Citizen’s Portal like the interoperability as mentioned earlier are being closely followed by software companies. Also the replicability of the project is being looked into by four companies which have been contracted. These are Siemens, Accenture, Novabase and Microsoft.

Sustainability

The most important strength of the project is keeping the ground realities of the area in mind. The project is making a conscious effort in including the two clear cut groups on a common platform. The digital divide will be reduced eventually especially with dedicated team leaders working round the clock. In terms of costing, for many services, the companies pays fees but because it is all done electronically the payments are not too high. Dematerialization, low fees, less paper invoices all contribute to sustainability of the project. The big revolution in the registration process with the activation of the Ministry of Justice goes a long way in achieving sustainability of the project. 

Lessons Learnt

It is important to network but it is even more important to make the network continue. The role of Education in the social and economic development continues to be of immense importance.  Technology without ‘having deeper connection with grass root realities and participation or without linkages to local target groups can never be sustained either in a developed or a developing country. And Education, training and simplicity of approach to technology is the prime motivation for most people to use it.