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e-government project CiTel
Municipality of Pisa
Italy

The Problem

The Citel plan, “Telematic Front office for the citizen”, coordinatedby the Municipality of Pisa, fits totally in the strategic and innovative guidelines that have always directed the start and the growth of the Municipal Network of Pisa.
The first of these guidelines can be summarized through the words: “the matter is to place side by side the real city and the digital city, where to travel are data streams and the streets are telematic infrastructures” (“Le Scienze - Scientific American”, special issue December 1997 - Luigi Paoli and Franco Chesi, Pisa Municipality Information System).
The second guideline is “to unify the citizen’s access points toward Public Administration”: a citizen must be able to contact PB through the most comfortable channel to him, without knowing the internal PB structure.
Another important value brought by Citel is its high accessibility for all the citizens that extend its benefits overcoming cultural and environmental barriers, to elderly and disabled people also.
Moreover the project’ resulting know-how for the administration, can stimulate local organizations through the relationship among themselves and with external suppliers. This know-how allow Public Administration to grow its skills and to improve the quality of its products and activities.
With regard to that, it is very important the Regional agreement settled to extend Citel services to most of the Tuscany Municipalities, through the integration of Citel and AIDA - a project of Livorno Municipality.

Solution and Key Benefits

 What is the initiative about? (the solution)
The CiTel plan "Telematic Front office for the citizen", has been realised by the Municipality of Pisa with the Italian Office W3C and other private partners like Regulus, Cedaf, and is oriented to provide a web based service desk to citizens and firms on more channels, both virtual and real , reducing rears and procedures.
The E-government plan named CiTel, realized within the Tuscany Telematic Regional Net, has come in fourth position in the selection advertised by Ministry of Technological Innovation.
With the realization of the plan the citizen is able to approach the desk for information or services directly by his computer, by mobile phone or by telematic kiosks installed in several points of the city, avoiding rears and bureaucratic routes.
These services are intended not only to the citizens of Pisa but also to the people resident in the neighbouring cities of Sant Giuliano Terme, Vecchiano, Volterra, Calci, Vicopisano, San Miniato, Pietrasanta and Cascina.
The citizen is admitted to services after being identified through various levels of credentials, starting from the login and password (low credential) to the Electronic Identity Card (strong credential) and the digital signature.
The citizens which do not use the more advanced technologies may contact the usual information and service desk and the Call Center by a free number. In this case, the operator is able to answer in a more complete way than in past times approaching the information requested by the citizen through fixed identification codes.
The Ci-tel telematic desk is thought not only for citizens, firms, Tax Assistance Centers but also for tourists (who can book and pay the tickets of exhibitions and museums), students ( it is possible, for example, to have access to timetables and class registries.
The citizens may access with a unique acknowledgment system and to make payments using the same mode for every involved local authority.
Now it is possible, connecting to the website www.e.pisa.it, to obtain the following services on line: acknowledgment system; automatic routing to the proper office without knowing the final destination; estimation of citizen satisfaction; delivery of requests and fiscal statements checking the own position and calculating the money due; sending of SMS to the citizens for the interesting events; payments on-line; account statements for firms; building declarations and application; applications for the limited traffic area; state and payments of local taxes and fines; registry self-declarations on line; changes of residence; applications for schools; payments of the cemetery “lux perpetua”; booking and tickets for museums; class registries in the schools of Pisa.

Actors and Stakeholders

 Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
Achieved Activity

May 2003 - Project start;
september 2003 - Architecture Analisys and Design;
January 2004- Delivery Phase 1: Base components, Authentication (ID-pwd, Smart-card), e-Learning, CRM - Customer management (4services), Customer satisfaction gathering, Local taxes;
October 2004 - Delivery Phase 2: Private building, Registry office, Education services, School Class Register;
May 2005 - Delivery Phase 3: Local Finance, Town Planning, Tourist services, On-line Payments for all services;
November 2005 - Delivery Phase 4: Disabled persons office, Fines Payment, Local Police.

Most of these on-line services are available through:
- Web Browser (PC)
- Kiosk
- Phone (Call center)
- DTT-TV (Digital Terrestrial Television)

(a) Strategies

 Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
 a.      What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
The municipality of Pisa has been since long time aware of technological evolution, looking at them which could help in simplifying the relationships between citizens and administration and improve imagine of the administration itself.
In pursuing this task of continuous technological improvement, the municipality of Pisa has also traditionally played a leading guidance role for other municipalities related to its territory. This role fitted in the national guidelines for e-government, which have been an excellent opportunity to catch.
On the other hand e-government is a technical, economic and social challenge, where wrong or short-sighted decisions can waste resources.
For this reason Municipality of Pisa has built for a long time a qualified technical organization composed of internal staff, government partners and private partners regulated by specific agreements and contracts.

(b) Implementation

 b.      What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
The CiTel plan "Telematic Front office for the citizen" was oriented to the realization of a telematic web-based service desk to citizens and firms on several channels, both virtual and real, reducing rears and procedures.
The municipality of Pisa was mainly looking for:
• enhancement of services;
• increased transparency (citizens should be well aware of what is going on);
• set up of the “Digital Office”;
• development of infrastructures in the regional area;
• optimization and organizational costs saving.
To fulfil these requirements some well defined and concrete objectives have been identified:
 Setting up a unique municipal desk. The service to the users is performed by the front-office, and citizens perceive it as the “unique” office.
 Set up of a call-centre, whose task is offering front-office services as well as supplying first-aid information and accepting claims, as usual.
 Activation of a bi-directional web based communication channel between citizens and administration.
 Allowing payment of a wide variety of services through the web.
 Allowing access to services also through distributed multimedia kiosks.
 Supplying information to citizens using several media, like SMS and e-mail.
 Extending service offering to tourists.

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

 c.      What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
The www is a big way to bring services to all citizens, but must also consider some challenging issues.
First of all, there are technical issues. Any project will not start “from the scratch”, but will have to consider previous investments resulting in legacy systems. Some of them can be rewritten in new environments, while in some other cases this could be too expensive. Therefore interoperability with existing software and hardware platforms is a key success factor. It is unlikely that available resources can support a full replacement of existing applications. Designers must carefully consider portability and compatibility with future technologies. Finally, some legal aspects, like security and privacy, must be considered, as personal data are processed and stored, and financial transactions must be executed. To cope with such requirements, appropriate technical choices must be done.
The economical issues are mainly concerned with return of investments and safeguard of the previous ones. The last point leads again to interoperability considerations and to some other considerations, like the effectiveness of the resulting application.
Finally, social issues are mainly concerned with the usability by a large variety of people. This implies that the interface must be usable by disabled or elderly people, understandable by low literacy or non native language people, etc.
It is easily seen that these requirements are not orthogonal. In a few words, the most significant characteristic of any successful e-government application is its quality.
The municipality of Pisa based this project on the Layne model to develop a fully functional e-government. This model, based on technical, organizational and managerial feasibilities, suggest that e-government is an evolutionary phenomenon and posits four stages of a growth model:
(1) cataloguing, (2) transaction, (3) vertical integration, (4) horizontal integration.
The first stage is called “cataloguing” because efforts are focused on cataloguing government information and presenting it on the web to establish an on-line presence for the government.
In the second stage the e-government initiatives focus on connecting the internal systems to on-line interfaces facing citizens.
However citizens desire to see the government as an integrated information base and contact one point of government to complete any level of governmental transaction. This integration may happen in two ways, vertical and horizontal. Vertical integration refers to local and central administration connected for different functions or services. Horizontal integration is defined as integration across different functions and services.

(d) Use of Resources

 d.      What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
The project value, in terms of services’ quality improvement for citizens is:
• A citizen is able to contact PB through the most comfortable channel to him, without knowing the internal PB structure.
• The web site accessibility and the e-Learning platform provide all the citizens with its services independently from the deep differences in culture, education, technical skill, resources, age and disability.
• A citizen can use these services from his house, saving time and movements.
• From the same access point a citizen can reach services of all the municipalities involved in the project.
• Citel also provides local organizations and professional persons with its services.

Sustainability and Transferability

  Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
The project is included in the Program Agreement on the “reuse” of Tuscany Region. This Program has stated, at national level, regulations and funds devoted to the “Electronic Administration” diffusion in small and medium Municipalities and Mountain Community.
Citel project made use of these funds, of the funding of some private firms and of the Pisa administration internal staff work.
The project Citel is included in this Program, in the “Citizen Informative Services “ area;
80 Municipalities, one million citizens, already agreed in Tuscany. The reuse of Citel, in this context, is very important for its running and growth.

Lessons Learned

 What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
The main issues and the greater difficulties found in the project realization are summarized in the following table:
- Political support,None
- Project goals definition,Low
- Definition of the responsabilities,Medium
- Coordination among the organizing entities,low
- Coordination with consultants,Low
- Coordination with other Public Administrations,Medium
- Project incentives,Low
- Design phase issues,Low
- Internal unrest,X
- Relevant internal skills,X
- Technical and supply resources,None
- Economic and financial resources,None
- Internal staff involvement,None
- Data and information circulation,None

An important issue came from the relationships with Banks for the “on-line Payments System” agreements.
Main issues were found in relationship with other Public Administrations and to do many more meetings and to produce a lot of documents to be circulated among the Administrations should be needed.

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Municipality of Pisa
Institution Type:   Government Agency  
Contact Person:   Franco Chesi
Title:   Manager E-Government  
Telephone/ Fax:   050-910388
Institution's / Project's Website:   050-910581
E-mail:   f.chesi@comune.pisa.it  
Address:   Via Uffizi 1
Postal Code:   56100
City:   pisa
State/Province:   tuscany
Country:   Italy

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