Case Abstract Mypage

Policy Context and Legal Framework

Mypage
provides a single entrance to public services online and helps users
confused about public sector organisation to find their relevant
services regardless the service provider. It provides a “one stop shop”
functionality with all the necessary information given in one place.
The idea of a “one stop shop” for public services is not new, but the
solution and the scale of operation of Mypage is new.

The Mypage initiative is firmly rooted in the eNorway 2009 plan which
is a follow up of the Lisbon strategy and i2010 initiative. Mypage is
also a central tool in the eMunicipality 2009 plan, parallell to the
eNorway 2009 plan for the municipality sector. As such the Mypage
project is a key enabler for the realisation of eGovernment objectives
both at the local, regional, and national level. It is also in line
with the prioritised eGovernment objectives at the European level,
especially covering the objectives of making an information society for
all and for providing direct benefits to the citizens. The recently
presented Government report "An Information Society for all", stresses
the importance of Mypage as a central key in bringing digital
self-service to the citizens.

Finally Mypage has achieved the difficult incorporation of the
different aspects of interoperability –technical, semantic and
organisational- as defined by IDABC in their European Interoperability
Framework. Also the more general principles put forward by in this
framework: Accessibility, Multilingualism, Security, Privacy,
Subsidiarity, Use of Open Standards, Access the benefits of Open Source
Software and the use of Multilateral Solutions have been central in
developing Mypage.

Implementation and Management Approach

The
initiative of Mypage has been driven personally by the Minister of
Administration and Reform through a direct dialog with the leaders of
state agencies.

The participating agencies have been involved with every aspect of the
development process since the begining, being this an effective way to
ensure that Mypage would meet their expectations.

A special group was established to coordinate the development of the
portal and the services from the agencies. Each agenciy was responsible
for delivering its own services, and for each municipality and
governmental agency a contact point / organisation was established.

While driven top-down with involvement throughout the organisation in
state agencies, the project was driven bottom-up with direct contact
between Norge.no and the individual municipality.

Technology solution

The
Mypage authentication services utilize the manual mail delivery
services for Tax forms from a service provider to distribute the PIN
codes used for authentication. The tax forms are distributed to all
inhabitants annually. Mypage also plans to offer distribution of PIN
codes via mobile phones (on request).

Mypage uses commercial SMS and E-mail services to inform citizen about
a new message in the Mypage secure message box and related to the
authentication service for e.g. temporary password.

Mypage has done pilot testing using the mobile browser Opera to access
the Mypage solution. The major challenge is that most of the services
accessed via Mypage is implemented by the services providers in their
own system outside Mypage. To support mobile devices all services from
all service providers has to support mobile devices.

Impact

Mypage
introduces the concepts transaction services and register services.
Transaction services are interactive services requireing 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.

The Mypage is the first operational national citizen’s services portal
available for all norwegians above 13 years handling services from all
levels of the administration. Mypage handles at the moment 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 according to newly approved
standard from Liberty Alliance /OASIS (SAML 2.0)

The Mypage solution and architecture is dynamically scaleable to more
users, services, service providers by simple configuration. The Mypage
solution also incorporates a semantic foundation building on a thematic
organisation of services assisted by a controlled vocabulary.

Track record of sharing

As
far as we know Mypage is the first self-service citizen portal with
services, secure communication and single point of access established
across state and municipal goverment. A number of countries have shown
considerable interest in the project.

Mypage has been presented and used as an example for how to establish
citizen portals in a Nordic national portal groups which has member
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 to parts of the country.

Lessons learnt

Lesson
1 - The main lesson learnt from the project is the importance of
involving all actors from the beginning. 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 been important in
order to secure 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 to get other parties involved
in its support.

Lesson 3 - The last, but not least, lesson learnt is the importance of
focusing on users' needs. This can not be overstated. Mypage is a user
oriented initiative and without constantly keeping the citizen in focus
the project would probably have failed and ended as yet another good
idea never brought to its full potential.