Impact

Information from public authorities and municipalities are dealt with decentralised within the framework of the Swedish governmental services. The entrepreneur/citizen has to turn to and interact with each responsible authority to collect information or to carry out his/her business. This is regardless of whether the entrepreneur wants to meet with an authority in person or if he/she wants to use an e-service.

The public authorities behind verksamt.se have, during the last decade, to some extent tried co-ordination and co-operation. The Swedish Companies Registration Office (Bolagsverket) and the Swedish Tax Agency (Skatteverket) have developed and are running foretagsregistrering.se (http://foretagsregistrering.se) where entrepreneurs can register their companies and carry out some of their business electronically. The usage of e-filed and e-signed applications to the Swedish Companies Registration Office and the Swedish Tax Agency have increased up to 40 % of all filed applications for registration.

At the website for the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth (Tillväxtverket) you can find the Entrepreneur's Guide (Företagarguiden) that guide both active entrepreneurs as well as new entrepreneurs within the areas of starting up a business, financing and development among others. The Entrepreneur's Guide was developed among a great deal of different public authorities and works well as a guide and entrance to the Swedish authorities for entrepreneurs. The Entrepreneur's Guide has developed from 150 000 unique visits in 2003 to 600 000 unique visits in 2008.

Thanks to verksamt.se the co-operating public authorities have gone the whole way and now gather information, tools and possibilities to carry out ones businesses electronically at the same website. And the benefits of this are sustainable and growing.

At the 200 new local service offices verksamt.se and its related information products now can be utilised and become widely distributed.

In a return-on-investment analysis, based on the PENG-model, of verksamt.se it is said that the gross benefit is increasing by an average on SEK 77 millions per year during the benefit period (when all beneficial effects reach 100%, in 2012, SEK 133 millions). An increase of new entrepreneurs makes up 57% of the benefits and 39% by increased benefits for society. Almost half of the benefits consist of secure benefits.

The evaluation of the benefits has been done carefully. Regardless of this the evaluation shows that the investment with a very good margin is profitable and sustainable. The analysis can be found in the document "4_ROI_PENG-analysis.pdf" and a description of the method used can be found in "5_Description_of_PENG_model.pdf".

The municipalities and other involved parties on the field get a tool box to use in the contact with their target groups. The improved national information prevents the duplication of work in unnecessary local and regional portal-projects. These arise if the national information is difficult to access or non existent.

The design of the website is new and inspiring and does not have the heavy feeling of bureaucracy otherwise associated with governmental information and services. See presentation of the website verksamt.se in the provided document "1_Verksamt_Demonstration.pdf".

Consequently verksamt.se results in Swedish entrepreneurs being winners both in their capacity as entrepreneurs and as citizens (tax payers).

Track record of sharing

During the period of development many contacts and exchanges of experiences regarding verksamt.se have taken place both nationally and internationally, for example participation in conferences, formal and informal networking with other public authorities, similar projects etcetera. The exchange of experience will continue and is a very central part of building successful solutions. Through The Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems (Vinnova) many contacts and information sharing has taken place both nationally and internationally, with practitioners as well as researchers.

Among the international events verksamt.se (then with the name Mitt Företag/My Business) has been presented at an e-Government Research Network workshop in Vilnius, Lithuania, December 2007. It was an input to discussions among researchers in the eGovernment field how their result can contribute and be useful for project like verksamt.se. Sharing and learning from best practices has also taken place at the previous conferences on the European Charter for Small Enterprises, 2007 in Berlin and 2008 in Bled.

The web-site verksamt.se has been presented at a so called Jamboree for the ones responsible for the introduction of the EU Services Directive, Point of Single Contact, in November 2008. The presentation resulted in contacts with the responsible persons for the Points of Single Contact in other countries and in the exchange of experiences and result propositions. Among others the Finnish portal EnterpriseFinland.fi has developed its portal on the same platform (LifeRay) as verksamt.se. Information exchange about architecture and the Message Box-service has been done with the Dutch portal Antwoord vor Bedrijven.

The exchange of experiences has taken place nationally with for example the PRIOS-project (seven municipalities in Skåne, in the south of Sweden, that develop e-services for entrepreneurs). The contacts have led to an analysis of interested parties and discussions about the co-operation between verksamt.se and PRIOS regarding a pilot-project aiming at connecting governmental and local services for entrepreneurs on the web. Other contacts take place with the Prophet-project (the municipalities of Linköping and Norrköping), the Federation of Swedish Farmers and the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions.

During the Swedish EU Presidency we will continue to share best practices at different meetings a conferences. Among those are the next Charter conference "From the European Charter for Small Enterprises to the Small Business Act" that will take place 5-6 October 2009 in Stockholm.

References

Vilnius workshop:
http://www.egovernet.org/templates/Page.aspx?id=258

Presentation of verksamt.se at Jamboree in November 2008, se program:
http://www.jamboreepsc.eu/workshops/)#round-2_room-c

The contacts with PRIOS have gone through Kerfi AB.

Lessons learnt

Verksamt.se is a case of collaboration and share many difficulties with other collaboration projects and initiatives for example that it takes time and different communication difficulties. But the lesson is that the effort pays off - its fun, inspiring and the end result gets better by the involvement of many partners. In the case of verksamt.se the collaboration efforts are necessary for the product itself.

What might be partly unique for verksamt.se and something to learn from is that it is part of a broader collaboration initiative. A collaboration group of six public authorities has a joint strategy and a vision and has developed common information and services towards entrepreneurs and enterprises with a multi-channel approach. Verksamt.se is the e-channel part in this initiative, but the content - the information about "considering to start a business", "start a business", "run a business", "develop a business" and "wind-up a business", is based on a collaborative work between the partners and re-used in other collaborative products in other channels, such as a common brochure for start-ups.

Our experience from the user-centric development is the importance of having enough of resources and competence to interpret and analyze user needs. User needs can be spoken, unspoken or unknown, and they need to be processed and understood correctly before they can be used as basis for development. Especially the competence to find out the unspoken and unknown needs is essential to include in the project.

Another generic experience is the importance of sharing the same goal, and to be certain that the picture and the definitions are the same. The metaphor about the blind men and an elephant can be useful. They all have a completely different idea of what an elephant is depending on what part of the elephant they touch. Likewise it is easy to think that you agree or share an objective, but later you find out that you had different perceptions. To communicate and communicate again, define deeper, use process mapping, check and communicate again and again are the lesson here.

Verksamt.se has an ambitious scope and our shared knowledge of such projects is not to let the best be the enemy of good. Deliver and develop.

Stinginess, pressure of time etc. must constantly be kept under control so it does not alter the main objectives or stops you from learning from other good practices. To look around and talk with others and listen and learn now and then are well invested activities.

Some other experiences from our collaboration work are:

• People in a joint action work should be willing to compromise and always take the enterprise's needs into account. Many decisions are taken on a more or less unconscious level from a more internal perspective.
• Each authority has a different definition of the target groups and the terminology is not consistent. Use of language is closely related to professional identity and culture. Authorities have different roles and have developed different attitudes and approaches to new enterprises. It is time to bridge these differences.
• The parties in a joint action project should before the development stage be in agreement about how the developed services are administrated when they are complete
• The parties in a joint action project should be in agreement about how costs are distributed and which other resources are required in the development and administrative work, and which collaboration partner will provide these resources.
• The people who represent the authorities in joint action programmes should have a clear mandate. Otherwise the decision-making processes become unnecessarily long and drawn out.
• Internal support of joint action is essential. Plan at an early stage how the development work and its results should be made known and used by each organisation.