User-centric public administration through proactive, non-interactive services
Public administration services are bureaucratic and tedious. Citizens and companies frequently have to appear in person at a government office and repeatedly submit information such as an address. Austria’s no-application family benefits system is considered a role model for the administration of public services in Germany. The question is how such user-centric services can be implemented from both a technical and organizational standpoint. When it comes to user-centric public administration services, fortiss is looking beyond the optimization of online applications and demonstrating how these services can be handled completely without applications.
Proactive public administration takes matters into its own hands and helps its users in order to reduce the effort to a minimum. This is achieved through the use of uniform interfaces between the participating IT systems to enable automated data inquiries and applications.
As part of the project, researchers are developing and piloting a readiness assessment method for public administration services that focuses on efficient processes, user-centric services and a system that appeals to the public administration employees. This method involves the use of new systems such as artificial intelligence (AI) and digital ledger technologies (DLT).
Digitalization makes it possible to transform public administration from bureaucratic approval offices into user-centric service providers. Users are proactively supported and provided with individual administrative services. The results of the project will help researchers to take abstract user-friendliness concepts such as once-only and proactivity and apply them to practical public administration activities.
In concert with IBM, fortiss will develop an open-source interface specification in line with the OpenAPI Standard, which covers not only typical interactions between users and public administration offices, but also internal activities. Since the specification is the same across all public administration services, it can be easily scaled.
