Lower Saxony, EU Services Directive
FACTS AND FUNCTIONALITIES
- Object model for planned ventures, services, queries and responsible bodys
- Template management for notifications (correspondence) and business cases (metadata)
- Interface to electronic court and administration mailbox
- Exchange fo data via "XFall Niedersachsen" (in accordance with XEUDLR)
TASK
The EU Services Directive had to be implemented by the end of 2009. The Directive specifies the provision of a contact point for service providers to simplify start-up procedures and the carrying out of their work. In Lower Saxony the requirement is dealt with at state level by the Federal Ministry of Economics and at municipal level by 55 points of single contact for rural districts, urban districts and large independent cities. The state was in search of a customised application to support employees of Lower Saxony in handling requests that could also be made available to employees of the points of single contact at municipal level as a further option.
SOLUTION
Several providers presented their solutions for the implementation of the required customised application in a market analysis process. Fabasoft presented a prototype based on the electronic file (“eAkte”) of the state of Lower Saxony. This application is already based on Fabasoft eGov-Suite and has been in use since 2008. Fabasoft was awarded the contract by Lower Saxony to implement the specialist application.
IMPLEMENTATION
Once Fabasoft had been awarded the contract the specification was drawn up with the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry for Economics, Labour and Transport and the Lower Saxony Institute for Statistics and Communication Technology. The existing requirement profile for Lower Saxony acted as a basis. An object model was created in the course of the realisation process to represent the intentions, services, the responsible offices and service providers.
Further to the future XEUDLR standard in Lower Saxony the interface was created on an XML basis. The XEUDLR standardisation planned for 2010 has the intention of making data available throughout Germany via the data exchange standard. The focus of the Lower Saxony IT solution for the implementation of the EU Services Directive is on creating the conditions for legally compliant communication between the systems involved.
- The Lower Saxony service portal provides the input interface for the service provider.
- The special application for the points of single contact acts as an intermediary between the service portal and the responsible authorities.
- Responsible authorities process the requests. The data is handed over in respect of the point of single contact and responsible authorities via an electronic court and administration mailbox, a special form of virtual mailroom originally developed for the German legal system.
The further planning envisages the integration of the Citizens and Business Service for the synchronisation of the authorities’ master data and the Central Identity Management for the synchronisation of the service provider master data.
OBJECTIVES MET
After the contract was awarded in September 2009 specification acceptance followed at the beginning of October. The portal was then presented to the general public in a press conference on 21 December 2009. The system went into live operation, as scheduled, on 28 December 2009. The portal is available to the applicants on www.dienstleisterportal.niedersachsen.de and on the websites of the municipalities involved.