Digital Social Services for local communities

Acronym of the case:

DSH

Web address of the case:

http://www.digitaalsociaalhuis.be

Country of the case:

Belgium

City/region:

Vlaams Brabant

Posting Date:

8 December 2008

Last Edited Date:

07 March 2009

Author:

Jan Vangrinsven (VERA)

collaboration | municipalities | e-government

Type of initiative

Project or service
Network

Case Abstract

The "Digitaal Sociaal Huis" from VERA is a web based application where inhabitants can find their way through all services and products provided by the participating municipalities. The creation and maintenance of these products (300) is - whenever available - done by a direct content feed from the "Rechtenverkenner" . Otherwise, the generic content is managed by collaboration rules, organized by VERA. Each participating municipality can enrich the generic product descriptions by specific content, personalized e-forms and contact information. After validation these products are published to a dedicated website or integrated into existing websites. Here civilians can browse and search the products, complete the webforms and initiate a request which will be handled in system's backoffice.

Description of the case

Domain

eGovernment

Topic

Regional and Local | Multi-channel Delivery | Open Source | Services for Citizens

Sector

Local/Regional Community Development | Social Services | Other Social Services

Start date - End date

June 2008 (Ongoing)

Date operational

February 2008

Target Users

Citizen | Administrative | Intermediaries

Target Users Description

The project offers a tool for local communities, municipals and social organizations. For the moment "Digitaal Sociaal Huis" will be used by 40 towns, 80 organizations and up to 400 people.

Scope

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

Status

Operation

Language(s)

French | Dutch

Policy Context and Legal Framework

Digitaal Sociaal Huis is a collaboration of 40 municipalities in the regio Vlaams Brabant (Belgium) organized by VERA. Other organizations can join this community by a commitment to the charter and to engage themselves for the maintenance of a small set of product descriptions.

VERA is an autonomous company, created by the province of Vlaams Brabant in 1999. It's main goal is to create an extranet and a platform for digital services and communication.

Project Size and Implementation

Type of initiative

Inclusive services of general interest

Overall Implementation approach

Partnerships between administration and/or private sector and/or non-profit sector

Technology choice

Open source software

Funding source

Public funding regional | Public funding local

Project size

Implementation: €49-299,000

Yearly cost:

€1-49,000

Implementation and Management Approach

VERA acts as a program manager for the deliverance of ICT services for local communities. Therefore we keep a close eye on new technologies, and take initiative in the implementation of ICT related projects.

For these projects we do market research and analyses. The development is outsourced to private companies.

Technology solution

Digitaal Sociaal huis is build on Alfresco software, same technology used as the CIRCAB project from the EC. (http://forge.osor.eu/projects/circabc/). Our Alfresco server holds the main repository, the access rules and webscripts for content retrieval and publication.

Users and groups are managed on SUN Ldap server and we use a customized administration tool written in PHP. LDAP and Alfresco are synchronized, and extra user information is exported in an Alfresco content space.

We use the same XML format for productdescription as rechtenverkenner and are very deep involved in open standards and open source.

Impact, innovation and results

Impact

Real impact : the participating organizations benefit by content sharing. Instead of maintaining 300 product descriptions, they only have to update 7 products when needed. The products have the same content over the different municipals, which is less confusing for the civilians visiting different websites.

Expected impact : Product formats (XML) will grow to a de facto standard for related services. This will optimize further integration to different back office applications and ease the use of Business Process Management.

Lessons learnt

Lesson 1 - The project was only started after a well-defined commitment by enough participants and guaranties for further development. It holds many possibilities for integration (web services) and extensions to other products and even other organizations.

Lesson 2 - End users are continuously motivated to follow the progress of development and give feedback on usability and content.

Lesson 3 - The project is build on open source, open standards and open content.

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