A model of innovation and simplification in eGov practice

Acronym of the case:

AIDA

Web address of the case:

http://aida.comune.livorno.it

Country of the case:

Italy

City/region:

Livorno

Posting Date:

13 June 2007

Last Edited Date:

13 June 2007

Author:

Graziella Launaro (Comune di Livorno)

unification | knowledge base | procedures

Type of initiative

Case Abstract

AIDA - Applications for Interoperable Digital Administration,provides a shared model and online implementation for the whole lifecycle of bureaucratic services for local administrations targeted at citizens and businesses, allowing an easy process composition for the e-delivery of administrative services and an effective process formalization within a growing knowledge base, thus fostering the unification and coordination of organizational models across a significant number of local and regional administrations. This is made possible by an interoperable process architecture, able to integrate and coordinate workflows including administrative networks and external sub-processes running across heterogeneous systems and organizations.

Description of the case

Domain

eGovernment

Topic

Sector

Social Security | Crime, Justice and Law

Date

January 2003 to January 2005

Date operational

September 2005

Target Users

Citizen | Business (industry) | Business (SME) | Business (self-employed) | Administrative

Target Users Description

The AIDA knowledge base currently covers over 200 bureaucratic procedures including 47 services related to the startup, operation and termination of businesses, as well as environment and healthcare related matters. The services are currently used by hundreds of business and private citizens to manage thousands procedures per year.

Scope

Regional (sub-national) | Local (city or municipality)

Status

Not applicable/not available

Language(s)

Italian

Policy Context and Legal Framework

The project has been carried over under a number of regulations, directives and general policies linked to the simplification and improvement of egovernment services at local, national and EU levels.
The project has been initially funded by the Italian e-Government action plan published in year 2000, which lays the basis for the Italian strategy on the development of modern government services.
AIDA specifically addresses the CoBrA Recommendations , which have set the targets for Modern and Innovative Public Administrations in the 2010 horizon as well as the Bloomsday Recommendations about Interactive and multi-platform public services. At Italian and regional regulation level, AIDA is positioned within the e-Toscana project, a strategic investment programme of the Tuscany Region, targeted at fostering the development of eGovernment and Information society in the region.
For what concerns the reuse of the AIDA model within other local and regional administrations, the adopted policy is the Tuscany Region regulation on the "Innovation and simplification within the Public Administration â€“ Distribution and reuse of the Information Society within the Tuscany Region" complemented by the EU regulations following the European Directive on the re-use of public sector information.

Project Size and Implementation

Type of initiative

Not applicable/not available

Project size

Implementation: €49-299,000

Implementation and Management Approach

The AIDA project, based on previous project results, including "SSUAP - Services for supporting One-stop-shops for the production activities" and "Documental Workflows for the Livorno Municipality", has been kickstarted in February 2003 by a Consortium of 20 public bodies and private companies led by the Livorno Municipality. After the service became operational in 2005, a growing number of local public bodies, mentioned in sect. 2.4, have adopted AIDA as re-use partners, deploying AIDA services on their own premises with the assistance of the private companies participating in the initial prototyping project. The activities are coordinated by the Municipality of Livorno, with support of the Tuscany Region and other local administration, chambers of commerce, utilities and trade associations.

Multi-channel issues:
AIDA delivers its services through a number of channels including:
- web portal
- digital terrestrial television
- GSM phone / sms
- multi-channel news feeds.
The integrated platform allows to track online and offline procedures thanks to the interoperability with existing external systems, across the whole administrative network involved in the provided service.

Impact, innovation and results

Impact

AIDA is covering a significant and growing number of services, mainly related to procedures needed for:
- Hospitality and tourist structures including tours guides and travel agencies;
- Public businesses, meeting and recreation places and sporting facilities;
- Small, medium and large temporary commercial and sales distribution in public areas (e.g. market stalls);
- Extraction and research of quarry and turf materials;
- Petrol based material distribution;
- Craft and Industrial services and production activity;
- Agriculture, forestry and animal breeding;
- Consultancy, estate agency, intermediary, sanitary and educational services;
- Provision of electricity, gas and water;
- Building applications, including fulfilment following authorisation (testing, registration and fitness for habitation);
- Grant and authorisation of public area permits (e.g. clearways) and respective taxes;
- Environmental fulfilments (including atmospheric emission, water drains, environmental impact evaluation and production processes involving strong health risk);
- Waste material fulfilments (recycling, questionnaire, M.U.D. â€“ Unique Environmental Declaration);
- Fulfilments related to security: fire prevention, high accident risks, security in workplaces and conformity of facilities to national safety and security laws.

AIDA is being currently adopted by a number of local public bodies across the whole Tuscany Region, and in particular including Comune di Livorno, Comune di Carrara, Comune di Grosseto, Comune di Lucca, Comune di Massa, Comune di Pisa, Comune di Siena ,Provincia di Lucca, Provincia di Massa Carrara, Azienda USL 2 Lucca, Azienda USL 5 Pisa, Azienda USL 6 Livorno,Camera di Commercio di Lucca, Unione delle Camere di Commercio della Toscana, Vigili del Fuoco di Livorno, Comune di Bagno a Ripoli, Comune di Borgo a Mozzano , Comune di Chiusi della Verna, Comune di Collesalvetti , Comune di Massa Marittima, Comune di Peccioli , Comune di Piombino, Comune di S. Vincenzo, Comune di Sambuca Pistoiese, Comune di Viareggio, ComunitÃ Montana del Casentino, ComunitÃ Montana del Cetona, Provincia di Livorno, Provincia di Pisa, Regione Toscana.
Within the Municipality of Livorno alone, the impact has been significant: around 10% of the procedures managed every year by the administration is now handled through the AIDA platform, accounting about 1200 processes per year and 200 active users.
The medium and long-term sustainability of the platform, initially funded by national and regional initiatives is currently under study, and a number of initiatives, including the participation to the FP7 ICT-PSP research programmes for the deployment and customization of the general platform over a much broader scale, possibly including other countries and different stakeholders.

Innovation:
AIDA services are delivered along with a collection of authoritative contents, based on the real experiences collected during an extensive analisys phase conducted along relevant local bodies. The technological solution provides an high interoperability level, thanks to the SOA architecture and standards adopted (XML, RDF, etc). Furthermore, currently very few One-stop-shops, offering similar services as those offered within AIDA provide online access, while most are still based on phone and personal interation.
Moreover, based on currently available and mostly widespread interoperability technologies, the AIDA platformâ€™s access channels include Internet, mobile and local digital television networks. In particular, in Livorno a successful experimentation is being turned into a stable service for delivering AIDA contents trough the local digital terrestrial television broadcaster, while web, blogs, SMS notifications along with multi-channel newsfeeds deliver a comprehensive communication set available to the service public, who can interact with the local administration using the most appropriate device, in any place, 24 hours a day.

Track record of sharing

The ongoing adoption of AIDA in over one hundred public bodies makes a clear example of a shared good practice. The ability to give citizens and business a single access point for most of the necessary bureaucratic processes linked to operating a business is a significant step forward for local public bodies. This, along with related local, regional, national and EU policies is constantly pushing administration in expressing interest in the adoption of AIDA on a much broader scale. The inclusion of AIDA within the Italian e-Government best practices is a clear sign of this interest. A clear path for the AIDA adoption by other local public bodies is published on the AIDA website. Additionally, two different hotlines for administrative and technical matters are available as support options.

Lessons learnt

The general case makes evident, in order to reach a reasonable quality for the delivery of bureaucratic services, the need for an orchestrated management of information, documents and workflow across different public bodies and public/private organization.
In order to achieve this objective, it is necessary to organise the available wealth of administrative information (dispersed across the personal practical skills of several individuals) into procedural knowledge, which can then be delivered both to users and automatic procedure managers. This has proven one of the most important asset resulting from the AIDA experience, as well as the one which can be more easily reused. Finally, the adoption of open standards, platform independent technologies, as well as open-source software has also proven an excellent choice, providing the possibilty to choose from a wealth of support options, lowering adoption barriers and reducing costs.

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