Impact

Mypage introduces the concepts' transaction services and register services. Transaction services are interactive services requiring dialogue with the user. Register services are lookups in personal information held by different governmental agencies. Of the more than 200 services available, changing the information on the tax card and ordering an estimate of the retirement pension are the two most used transaction services, with approximately 60,000 users each. One noticeable impact of Mypage is that it empowers citizens to control the information the public sector holds on them. This is a very important functionality that often comes in the background when we talk about the progression of eGovernment. As a result of Mypage, many users have discovered they had properties they did not know of, and vehicles registered on them that they do not own. Mypage will certainly raise the quality of the public held information of its users. Mypage’s solid support from especially the largest governmental agencies, and in an increasing degree also municipalities, means that the portal is able to provide access to some of the most used services online. Mypage itself is a cross-sectional common solution and it also includes two major common components that will be used for new governmental common service/components in the governmental eService architecture; common authentication service (Myid) and common secure mail/calendar service. The steady growth in users combined with a steady growth in available online services helps ensure a sustained growth and impact. The heavy backing from the most influencing governmental agencies is also an important key to further success as well as the high priority the project is given by the Ministry of Administration and Reform as well as the Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities. Mypage is the first operational national citizens' services portal available for all norwegians above 13 years handling services from all levels of the administration. According to the newly approved standard from Liberty Alliance /OASIS (SAML 2.0), Mypage currently handles more than 200,000 users and 200 services from more than 40 public service providers with a national authentication solution and federation of authenticated users on a national level. The solution and architecture of Mypage is dynamically scaleable to more users, services, service providers by simple configuration. Finally, Mypage solutionincorporates a semantic foundation building on a thematic organisation of services assisted by a controlled vocabulary.

Track record of sharing

Mypage is the first self-service citizen portal with services, secure communication and single point of access established across the state and municipal goverment. A number of countries have shown considerable interest in the project. Mypage has been presented and used as an example to establish citizen portals in a Nordic national portal groups and has members from all Nordic countries. Norway has an ongoing cooperation with Denmark which is in the process of establishing their own citizen portal. Exchange of information has been on topics like: architecture, security solution, project organisation, and inter-departmental cooperation. Norge.no is trying to establish a community for working with standardisation in citizens’ portal and security solutions in topics like electronic identity, user attributes and standardisation of services. This work is done in cooperation with the Liberty Alliance. The Liberty Alliance and Norge.no arranged a meeting on citizens’ portals in Oslo in the beginning of 2007 with participation from Denmark, Finland, Iceland and The Netherlands. Several countries outside the EU have requested information on the Mypage project. Norge.no has given presentations and information to countries as diverse as Russia, China, Korea and Canada. Norge.no has taken the initiative to a joint application to EEA/Norwegian Financial Mechanisms with Poland for implementing a Mypage solution in parts of the country.

Lessons learnt

Lesson 1 - The main lesson learnt from the project is the importance of having involved many actors from the inception of the project. This includes the local authorities through their organisation, The Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities as well as the Government Agencies and their controlling Ministries. The establishment of a coordinating group for e-Government involving the major administrations and the Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities has secured support from all public bodies involved in delivering services to the portal. The coordinating group is lead by the Ministry of Administration and Reform. Lesson 2 - A committed political leadership has proven to be vital for moving the project to full operation and getting other parties involved in its support. Lesson 3 - Last, but not least, Mypage focuses on users' needs. Mypage is a user oriented initiative keeping the citizen contstantly informed.