MyHELP - Your personalised service portal on official channels

Acronym of the case:

MyHELP

Web address of the case:

http://www.myhelp.gv.at

Country of the case:

Austria

Posting Date:

2 October 2009

Last Edited Date:

02 October 2009

Author:

Harald Pirker (Federal Chancellery)

life situation | interoperability | personalised service portal(one stop shop)

Type of initiative

Project or service

Case Abstract

The central E-Government portal of Austria Help.gv.at (http://www.help.gv.at) - run by the Federal Chancellery - exists since 1997 offering central information of different authorities and online transactions.The successful cooperation with the federal state, regions and municipalities constantly guarantees the highest possible quality of the information offered. Meanwhile, after twelve successful years, HELP has established itself as the primary contact point for citizens and entrepreneurs seeking advice, and functions as an inter-authority gateway to 13 federal ministries, 9 Austrian provinces, more than 80 district administrations and 2,356 municipalities.

Content structures according to life situations deemed to be highly useful for citizens. The structure of the content could be continously improved incorporating the user feedback and click behaviour. In 2008, the Austrian Federal Chancellery decided to personalise the web offering.thus increasing the in efficiency and relevance of data.. MyHelp offers a single point of entry for the user according to the relevant parameters entered, derived and combined. Using high standards of security MyHELP guides through the available e-government content and services in a pro-active way.

There are about 200 topics on various areas of life, that can be found at HELP.gv.at. One essential aim now of MyHELP is to give citizens the opportunity to see those topics, authorities and with personal relevance (e.g. only the appropriate authority is displayed).

MyHELP is not only an individually configurable version of HELP but also aÂ central cockpit for accessing several applications. MyHELP offers the user also additional functions, such as an information service on the selected topics, a reminder service for important dates, the option of directly linking one's private e-mail inbox to MyHELP, using an electronic delivery service and a secure document store. Additional services will follow.

Description of the case

Domain

eGovernment

Topic

Efficiency & Effectiveness, Benchmarking | Services for Citizens | Interoperability | Open Source | Regional and Local

Sector

Communication (infrastructure) | Local/Regional Community Development | Other

Start date - End date

January 2008 (Ongoing)

Date operational

January 2009

Target Users

Citizen

Target Users Description

The development and implementation of electronic public services is one of the priorities of the Austrian Federal Government. The government plan principally states that every citizen in every community should have access to all forms of eGovernment at the federal, provincial and local levels. Secure communication and transactions and confidential handling of personal data have top priority. MyHELP fulfils these requirements, offers additional functions from the private sector and supports citizens in a new and comprehensive way.

For citizens, the step by step implementation of eGovernment makes everyday life much easier. The wide breadth of services that can be made available at www.myhelp.gv.at can save a lot of time, energy and inconvenience and eliminate unnecessary formalities. Many types of electronic forms are already available online and more are planned for the future. MyHELP guarantees that you get exactly those forms you need in a specific life situation. Personalisation can help to safe time and keep the search results clear.

Access through the citizen card ensures that only that particular registered user can log into MyHELP. Following successful initial registration with the services, a one-time login is all that's needed to be able to utilize all integrated services by single sign on.

Scope

Local (city or municipality) | National

Status

Operation

Language(s)

German

Policy Context and Legal Framework

The Austrian eGovernment Act forms the legal foundation for electronic communication with public bodies. Through cooperation with Industry, bank debit cards and health insurance cards (e-card) can be equipped with an qualified certificate and thus citizen card functionality.

The Federal Platform Digital Austria was founded in 2005 by the Austrian Federal Chancellery as country-wide platform to help coordinate on a uniform eGovernment strategy for the Federal Government, the provinces, municipalities and local authorities and businesses. Through the integration of public administration bodies at all levels and in cooperation with businesses, all projects, strategies and guidelines are collectively planned, coordinated on and implemented.

The development and implementation of electronic public services is one of the priorities of the Austrian Federal Government. But also international services play an important role in the Austrian eGovernment strategy. By the Austrian Federal Chancellery these services are regarded as an important instrument for supporting mobility in the home market and European communities. Corresponding to the i2010 program, Austria takes special care to ensure, that electronic services are able to meet the needs of all citizens in different countries.

The Austrian eGovernment strategy is based on the following important principles:

Proximity to citizens
Convenience through efficiency
Trust and security
Transparency
Accessibility
Usability
Data securityCooperation
Sustainability
Interoperability
Technological neutrality

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

Mainly (or only) open standards | Accessibility-compliant (minimum WAI AA) | Open source software

Funding source

Public funding national

Project size

Implementation: €49-299,000

Implementation and Management Approach

Over several months, different project teams participated in the development of MyHELP. The project team at the Federal Chancellery was composed of two people, and was primarily responsible for planning the new functions and the general appearance of the portal.

The technical implementation of the project was done by the Federal Computing Center (Bundesrechenzentrum). The various tasks were carried out by the members of several teams and amounted to about 1,600 hours' work.

As MyHELP, like HELP.gv.at, runs on the Gentics Portal.Node system, there was no need for extensive adaptations to be carried out by the Gentics software producer. Only auxiliary services were carried out (e.g. preparing the regulatory system for the questionnaire for the personalized topic selection).

The company net-value, which also carries out the editing of the HELP.gv.at portal, supported the development of MyHELP by drawing up the privacy policy statement and the user help texts, as well as testing the functions and performing quality assurance shortly before activating it.

Implementation (structure, processes, management, communication)

The idea of developing a personalized version of HELP was first conceived at the Federal Chancellery at the beginning of 2008.

During the initial considerations, the question was: what requirements would a personalised version of HELP need to fulfil in order to be able to offer the citizen real advantages? The following requirements were stipulated for the concept:

Personal profile
Automatic personalization of topic selection through a questionnaire
Regionalization of the authority and form database
Connection to external applications
New services (e.g. reminder service, information service)
Access with the citizen card
Integration of important contents from HELP (e.g. current notices)
Discussion forum (particularly for the "young people" target group)

Over the following weeks, these points were planned in detail by the project team at the Federal Chancellery. Special attention was given to the design of the questionnaire, which was to provide the basis for the automatic preselection of the topics displayed in MyHELP. The aim was to define the current life situation of the user through as few questions as possible, so that he/she would automatically be shown only those topics with relevance for him/her.Â Â

The task of determining the design was also undertaken by the Federal Chancellery. In order to ensure a high degree of public recognition, the appearance of MyHELP was designed to match the corporate design of HELP (e.g. logo on the left upper edge of the screen and red-white-red flag in the header, color and shape of the boxes, imprint and logo of the Federal Chancellery on the lower edge of the screen).

The development of the proof-of-concept prototype was completed by the beginning of April 2008.

From June 2008 onwards, intensive discussions took place between the Federal Chancellery and Federal Computing Center, which was commissioned with the technical implementation of the concept. They jointly determined which of the new functions under consideration of the prototype of MyHELP could/should actually be realised. It was also agreed on the form and to what extent to implement these functionalities and the potential costs.

By August 2008, these concepts had been concretely worked out in joint project meetings, and the technical implementation of the project was finally begun in September. During this phase, regular meetings took place between the individual project teams, to ensure that all the concepts could be optimally realized. The technical development of the prototype of MyHELP was completed in mid-December 2008.

In 2009, the project entered into final phase. All the participants worked on clarifying final questions, improving the visual appearance further, testing functions and eliminating functional problems and technical bugs. During this phase it was also possible to solve problems concerning external applications such as the e-safe.

After extensive tests and subsequent adaptations, the development of MyHELP was successfully and planed completed on 26th January 2009.Â On 27thJanuary 2009, the Federal Chancellery presented MyHELP to the public at the ItnT Trade Fair in Vienna.

MyHELP is primarily advertised in HELP.gv.at (through a logo on all the welcome pages of the different target group sections and through an appropriate notice in the "Current News" box), and at the Service Center:Help.gv.at (http://www.digital.austria.gv.at/site/6542/default.aspx), where people who are interested can immediately have their e-card equipped with the citizen card function free of charge.

Technology solution

At the moment, about 200 topics on various areas of life can be found at HELP.gv.at. One essential aim now of MyHELP is to give citizens the opportunity to have displayed to them only those topics, authorities and forms from their own region or with personal relevance for them, and to thus make the range of offers in HELP individually clearer and more rapidly accessible.

Also the paradigm of SOA and especially of the granularity of servicesÂ was a driving element for establishing a combination of services focused on a personal need. More and more services are offered (eBanking Services, Electronic Delivery, ...) but always as matter of fact was the need to redo the authentication process for getting the individual data and services. There was also a development gone quiet intensive in the past years into interconnecting different portals regarding authentication and authorization data (PVP); also this development has been considered and integrated in the personalised form of HELP.

Within the portal group, data applications from one authority can be made accessible to other authorities on the basis of a common use and security agreement and a standardised portal group protocol (PVP). The portal group system allows participating organisations to use their own user management systems on the so-called base portal to access external applications. The operators of these applications can delegate the job of authenticating and authorising users to other portals. The operator defines access rights in accordance with the relevant statutory provisions for data protection. Access rights are granted to administrative units only, not to individual users. For individual users, roles are defined that users can be added to. Human resources grants access rights via roles to internal users according to their area of responsibility.

This has the advantages that it reduces the effort on the side of the application because it does not have to carry out user management. It also eliminates the need for multiple parallel user directories. In addition, single-sign-on is more convenient for users and makes the application easier to use. Participation in the portal group is governed by the Portal Group Agreement. This agreement sets out the rights and duties with which the joining partners must comply, such as carrying out user identification at login or other data security measures. Local authority bodies, public-law entities and other institutions performing public functions may also join the portal group.

The PVP forms the technical basis of the portal group. It supplements the organisational issues covered in the Portal Group Agreement (PVV) with technical details on the transmission of authentication and authorisation data. Other details include the protocol parameters, the link to HTTP or SOAP, the portal architecture, error messages and URL conventions.

Impact, innovation and results

Impact

After identifying the user with use of his concept citizen card device the personalisation process is following a few necessary steps of profiling and service expectations. Through voluntarily entering his/her personal data (e.g. town, address, zip code) into a profile and filling out a short questionnaire, the user receives a version of HELP which has been individually tailored for him/her. The more data is entered into the profile, the more specific the content pre-selection can be performed. Thus, the user immediately receives a standardized display of those topics which are important for him/her, without first having to select them from all 200 topics. If needed, the user also has the option of manually selecting additional topics at any time.

This personalization applies not only to the selection of the topics displayed, but also to the attached authority database, and to the available forms. In accordance with the ZIP-code entered, the user is shown only authorities in his/her region, and only forms which are available from authorities in his/her region. All the data stored in the profile of the user is stored encrypted and may only be accessed with the usage of the concept citizen card device.

The data which the user enters in his/her personal profile under "Town" has an effect on the areas "Authorities" and "Forms". The user is shown only authorities in his/her region and only forms which he/she can use at the authorities in his/her region. Here, the range of all forms available in HELP is directly tailored to the citizen: the user is immediately given access to forms which are relevant, without having to first select them from the full range of forms offered by HELP.

The display of authorities narrowed down by region likewise immediately takes the citizen to the authority responsible for him/her, thus saving time as well. This also includes the hierarchy network of Austrian authorities according to the law. That means some of the proceedings can not be fulfilled on the level of cities and/or communities but have to be performed on a district level or even on the level of the region. This semantic knowledge is performed out of the authority structures defined together as a result of the management board of the platform Digital Austria (www.digital.austria.gv.at) and included in a dynamic and common structure for exchange (Electronic proceedings- and product catalog - ELKAT). A new functionality so called 'responsibility finder' is also right now implemented and should guarantee a frequent, target oriented search of responsibilities according proceedings of authorities; this becomes especially valuable for the service directive implementations being handled right now.

While developing the concept of MyHelp functionality and improving the services offered by evaluating users needs the following functionalities were identified to act as a starting set of functionalities to the users.

The innovation is the bundling of services as well as the independent existing models; therefore the examples of the services mentioned also may be applied within other e-government applications as well as within other services (eBanking, ...).

Thus MyHELP provides a portal functionality which can be used as a point of access to several applications. The user can also access external services via MyHELP or the services of other institutions like finance authorities (Finance Online). In addition, private incoming e-mails can quickly be included to MyHELP. On the one hand processing forms using an automated system optimizes work processes and reduces error sources in public authorities. On the other hand there users save time and get information with more relevance.

Services on MyHELP:

Topic assistant: After personalisation, the topic assistant automatically selects the topics with relevance for that citizen from the range available in HELP. Regionalization of authorities and forms: Through entering his/her ZIP-code in the personal profile, the citizen is shown only authorities and forms from his/her region.
Reminder service: The reminder service offers citizens the option of letting themselves be reminded of specific expiry dates by e-mail. (passport etc.)Information service: The information service offers news on the personalized topic selection.Â
E-mail inbox link and delivery service: Citizens who have Gmail inboxes can link these to MyHELP. It is then possible to directly access one's private incoming e-mails via MyHELP. Likewise through the inbox function, for example the "Mein Brief.at" delivery service (https://www.meinbrief.at) can be used, and documents and written files securely delivered.Â Â
E-safe: The e-safe is a digital data safe where important documents (e.g. certificates and contracts) can be deposited in digital form.Â
Forum: MyHELP offers a discussion forum (currently on the topic of "Youth Rights"), where citizens - especially young people - can exchange views.

Here is a big potential seen concerning including Web2.0 functionalities in general.Â

MyHELP is thus not only an individually configurable version of HELP, but also serves as a point of access to a variety of applications aimed at creating recognizable additional benefit for the user. Access through the citizen card ensures that only that particular registered user can log on into MyHELP. Following successful initial registration with the services, a one-time login is all that's needed to be able to utilize all these services.

Track record of sharing

On 27thJanuary 2009, the Federal Chancellery presented MyHELP to the public at the ItnT Trade Fair in Vienna.

Many other member states could benefit from the development and results of MyHELP. There have been many usability tests, an ongoing evaluation of users needs, the integration of private sector services (cooperation), the consideration of accessibility aspects etc.

MyHELP is primarily advertised in HELP.gv.at (through a logo on all the welcome pages of the different target group sections and through an appropriate notice in the "Current News" box), and at the Service Center:Help.gv.at (http://digital.austria.gv.at/site/6542/default.aspx), where people who are interested can immediately have their e-card equipped with the citizen card function free of charge.

Citizen card concept and electronic delivery are implemented in the form of building blocks. In order for eGovernment to be accepted and used by the private sector, open source building blocks are available which can be used by businesses. The term open source means that the source code for a piece of software is open to the public and may be further developed and distributed.

MOA ID - Open source module for identification (www.egovlabs.gv.at): module is used to uniquely identify and authenticate users securely who want to conduct online procedures with their citizen cards.

Lessons learnt

eGovernment works best when all potential users are involved in the process. MyHELP enable businesses and citizens to make enquiries and file applications electronically, receive comprehensive information online, and make it easier to conduct transactions with public authorities.

Synergies can be gained combining eCommerce, eBusiness, and eHealth applications to build a bigger interoperability framework.

The IT infrastructure used should be modern, secure, flexible and expandable.

eGovernment interoperability will do more than just improve services, save costs, make work processes more efficient, and enable independent work. It will also make communication between citizens and businesses and the government more transparent, and open up new possibilities for the way information is presented and accessed.

Therefore 'starting points' will be established - MyHelp may be the first approach of such an e-Government cockpit (and even more).

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