Licensing of Hunters via the â€œMultibancoâ€ ATM network.

Acronym of the case:

AFN/MB

Web address of the case:

http://www.afn.min-agricultura.pt/portal/caca...

Country of the case:

Portugal

City/region:

All Country

Posting Date:

2 October 2009

Last Edited Date:

25 November 2009

Author:

AntÃ³nio Rego (National Forest Authority - Autoridade Florestal Nacional (AFN))

Hunters | Licenses | Multibanco

Type of initiative

Project or service
Strategic initiative

Case Abstract

This project is called â€œLicenciamento de caÃ§a atravÃ©s da rede Multibancoâ€ (Licensing of Hunters via the â€œMultibancoâ€ ATM network) and is based on the following premises:

a) Portuguese legislation restricts the practice of hunting to holders of a set of documents, including hunting licenses, and also foresees that the granting of said hunting license is restricted to holders of a valid hunter card, which is subject to the payment of a fee;

b) the â€œMultibancoâ€ ATM network is an electronic cross-bank network of automatic teller machines (ATM) with a geographical distribution that covers the whole of Portugal.

This service was created due to the existence of the following situations:

- the inconvenience and costs for citizens, inherent in having to travel to the respective office to obtain a license;

- the difficulty caused to citizens by the lack of a well-distributed, ongoing and effective hunting licensing network;

- the difficulty for Public Administration to effectively control the number and frequency of issued licenses;

- the difficulty for Public Administration to have up-to-date information on the revenues generated by the licensing process;

- the need to simplify the annual hunting licensing process;

- the costs and human resources needed by Public Administration to assure the annual distribution of cards and vignettes (way in which the license was formerly granted) and how many of these (surplus) it wasted.

Thus, a mechanism based on a hunting licensing system via the â€œMultibancoâ€ ATM network was developed. This project aims to achieve the following objectives:

- provide users with an easier and more convenient access to licensing within the well-distributed â€œMultibancoâ€ ATM network;

- allow users to access a public service 24 hours a day from anywhere;

- ensure that users get a faster and more responsive service;

- simplify and update a procedure that was already showing signs of detachment from the current social context;

- raise the level of security with which these types of licenses are issued and granted;

- improve information exchange and promote the sharing of dematerialised information;

This is an innovative project in the hunting sector owing to the fact that it changes a traditional and outdated reality in the way Public Administration works and it guides the latter towards technological modernity in its relationship with citizens, ensuring their comfort and economy of means.

Until this mechanism was implemented, licensing was carried out personally at the Offices of the National Forest Authority (AFN), of the Organisations in the Hunting Sector and of Town Halls, which required hunters to travel to the offices to obtain their license for each hunting season and proved to be scarcely effective for State revenue collection. Moreover, information was so dispersed that it made it impossible to count the exact number of licenses issued, or even ascertain their legality.

The implementation of this project greatly simplifies the purchase of licenses by hunters thanks to the existence of thousands of â€œMultibancoâ€ ATMs scattered around the Country. All that is required for the license to be issued is the hunter card number and the taxpayer identification number.

The main lessons that can be learned from the success of this project are the following:

- administrative simplification and the development of technological solutions in the relationship between public administration and citizens increases and assures revenues and allows to control revenues and reduce costs and waste;

- the comfort, convenience and security that these technological solutions add to the work carried out by public administration increases citizen confidence;

- technological innovation contributes greatly to the maintenance and growth of traditional activities, so important for a countryâ€™s culture.

Description of the case

Domain

eGovernment

Topic

Efficiency & Effectiveness, Benchmarking | Services for Citizens | Legal Aspects

Sector

Crime, Justice and Law | Local/Regional Community Development | Tax

Start date - End date

January 2008 (Ongoing)

Date operational

June 2008

Target Users

Citizen

Target Users Description

The sector which benefits from this technological solution is the hunting sector, an activity that in Portugal has an relevant economic and social (jobs) value of more than 340 million Euros.

At present, there are around 303.000 citizens holding a hunter card in Portugal, 50% of whom obtained a license in the 2008/2009 season (of these, more than 80% were issued via the â€œMultibancoâ€ ATM system).

In regards to hunting management and exploitation, Portugal is divided into approximately 4300 hunting areas, which corresponds to 90% of the mainland national territory and to 7,183,262 million hectares.

Hunting areas are managed, among others, by around 3000 hunter associations and hunting and fishing clubs, which are represented by regional and national organisations in the hunting sector and are beneficiaries of part of the revenues generated from this hunting licensing service.

The main challenges facing the hunting sector are:

- modernisation;

- the growth and sustainableÂ exploration;

- increasingly younger and numerous practitioners;

- improvement in the management of hunting areas;

- sustained growth of its economic weight;

The development of this technological solution is based on the observation of the first need: modernisation of the sector, followed by process simplification.

In order to support other challenges facing hunters, the State invests in the sector approximately 1 605 000 million Euros through strategic investment.

Scope

National | Regional (sub-national)

Status

Operation

Language(s)

Portuguese

Policy Context and Legal Framework

The execution of this project is part of an ambitious programme launched by the Portuguese Government to promote administrative and legislative simplification, called â€œPrograma Simplexâ€, which pursues the following main objectives:Â

- create mechanisms for the debureaucratisation of procedures, dematerialisation of processes and administrative simplification;

- guide Public Administration towards a prompt and effective response to the needs of citizens and businesses, increasing their confidence in public services and servants, easing their daily lives, the exercise of their rights and the fulfilment of their obligations, strengthening the safeguard of fundamental rights;Â

- allow citizens and businesses to obtain licenses and permits faster and to perform other formalities required to exercise their activity or exempt them from such procedures if these prove useless;Â Â

- ease the rationalisation and efficiency of Public Administration itself, promoting greater sharing of means and information between public services, greater collaboration in transverse processes and online work organisation;Â Â

- favour Portugalâ€™s competitiveness, reducing standard costs for the exercise of an economic activity.Â

The Simplex programme arose from the need to change processes and procedures already foreseen in the laws and regulations in force. That need to correct and simplify the strict regulatory processes and procedures and related administrative practices arises out of a negative assessment of their implications or their importance.Â

This effort to increase citizen confidence and favour Portugalâ€™s competitiveness, reducing standard costs for the exercise of an economic activity, is not a task assigned to a Ministry, but rather a shared responsibility. Therefore, the Simplex programme is the result of the work that involves the whole Government and, as an entity whose mission is to promote public service modernisation, UCMA was encumbered with the responsibility of preparing and monitoring the first Simplex programmes.

This programme is one of the European objectives for administrative and legislative simplification, particularly in the â€œPrograma de AcÃ§Ã£o para a ReduÃ§Ã£o dos Encargos Administrativos da RegulamentaÃ§Ã£o existente na EUâ€ (Action Programme for the Reduction of Administrative Burdens arising from the current EU Legislation), launched by the European Commission.

The 2007 Spring European Council ratified the above-mentioned programme and set a target of a 25% reduction in administrative burdens imposed on businesses, which the European Union and its Member States should jointly reach by 2012. It thus invited Member States to set their own targets, at national level. Portugal responded to this challenge and pledged to follow the programme to reduce administrative burdens on businesses within the EU and to develop its own programme, which comprises this project.

Project Size and Implementation

Type of initiative

IT infrastructures and products

Overall Implementation approach

Public administration

Technology choice

Standards-based technology

Funding source

Public funding national

Project size

Implementation: €49-299,000

Yearly cost:

€49-299,000

Implementation and Management Approach

In order to accomplish this administrative simplification process, which corresponded to measures imposed by the Simplex programme, a joint effort between the National Forest Authority and SIBS-Sociedade InterbancÃ¡ria de ServiÃ§os was necessary to integrate the information on hunting licenses.

The decision to bring this process forward is of the Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Development and Fishing and is foreseen in Ordinance No. 1509/2007 of 26 November. The National Forest Authority was in charge of making it operational and, in turn, engaged SIBS to develop the service and implement it in the whole â€œMultibancoâ€ ATM network. The product was available to citizens as of 1 June 2008, date of the beginning of the hunting season now ending (2008/2009 hunting season), so that all hunting licenses could be issued through this system.

Despite the clear benefits that the application of this mechanism delivers to citizens, the National Forest Authority kept a personal and customised license issuing service at its decentralised offices in order to assist citizens who have trouble dealing with the computer interface of the â€œMultibancoâ€ ATM system.

Considering that the hunting areas are spread throughout the whole country and that the working hours of Public Administration are not fully compatible with the practice of hunting, the fact that the â€œMultibancoâ€ ATM network has a wide geographical distribution and the possibility of issuing licenses 24 hours a day, 7 days a week were key factors inÂ chosing this technological solution.

This was also the main factor that determined the success of this project which, already in the first year of implementation, was used by more than 80% of all Portuguese licensed hunters who could obtain their license conveniently and comfortably, from anywhere in the country, 24 hours a day, without having to travel or wait in queues/line.

Other decisive factors for the execution of this project were:

- the inclusion of the administrative modernisation and bureaucratic simplification objective in the Programme of the XVII Constitutional Government;

- the creation of the Simplex Programme, which specifically included the objective to "simplify and dematerialise the issuance of hunting licenses ";

- changes to the regulatory framework for the licensing of hunters, foreseen in Ordinance No. 1509/2007 of 26 November.

Technology solution

Within the scope of the hunting licensing project, the electronic network of â€œCaixa AutomÃ¡tica Multibancoâ€ (ATMs) was chosen.

To choose this mechanism, a preliminary study was carried out to assess the different adequate technological solutions, which were required to meet the following requirements:

- mechanism already implemented in the country and recognised as secure;

- accessible mechanism, with a wide geographical distribution, preferably covering the whole country;

- fast and user-friendly interfaces;

After assessing the existing resources, it became clear that the electronic mechanism that best suited the pre-set requirements was the â€œCaixa AutomÃ¡tica Multibancoâ€ ATM network system, which is a universal network of banking services, already managed by SIBS in Portugal.

The operability of the whole system proved to be extremely important for the solution found, given that one of the objectives to be reached was the creation of a service that could be easily and intuitively used by citizens, simplifying the whole process and making the relationship between citizens and Public Administration more comfortable, without, however, neglecting the legal security inherent in the licensing process in question.

Moreover, another important aspect was the fact that this system allows the sharing of information with the supervisory authorities for hunting, which can thus consult, at any given place and time, the central register of licensed hunters. In case of consultation by the supervisory authorities, information can be requested to the central server by â€œsmsâ€ (text messaging) and received immediately via the same means.

The decision to bring this process forward was of the Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Development and Fishing and is foreseen in Ordinance No. 1509/2007 of 26 November. The National Forest Authority was in charge of making it operational and, in turn, engaged SIBS to develop the service and implement it in the whole â€œMultibancoâ€ ATM network.

The modus operandi of this system can be viewed in the file attached to this application.Â

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