| 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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The Citizen Spots materialized a new approach of delivering services to citizens and businesses, and an innovative model of working within public administration itself.
It represents an innovation on several fronts, namely:
• The unique way of delivering public and private services, in what may be regarded as a hybrid model that provides both onsite and online services, with the added value of providing education and training to all citizens in their digital interactions with the government and other private service providers;
• The redefining of processes: numerous entities worked together breaking silos, reformulating back offices, optimizing existing services, designing new ones and rethinking the way of delivering services;
• The effort made by the government to train around 2300 attendants capable of serving as citizenship mediators and provide, in one single desk and IT system, a wide range of sectorial services in an educational mode;
• The criteria used for the Citizen Spots’ implementation, such as demographics and public transports’ availability, which allows citizens to have a greater proximity to public services and reduces costs and time associated with travelling. Also, it should be highlighted that Citizen Spots will open first in areas where public services delivery is lacking the most.
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| 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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The initiative was implemented and is coordinated by the Administrative Modernization Agency (AMA) of Portugal.
AMA follows the responsibilities of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, whose mission is to support the Council of Ministers, the Prime Minister and other members of the Government, and to promote inter-ministerial coordination of the various governmental departments in the areas of modernization, administrative simplification and electronic government. The agency is also under the superintendence and tutelage of the Secretary of State Assistant for the Administrative Modernization, and the Ministry of Presidency and Administrative Modernization.
AMA’s activity is divided in three major pillars, all interconnected: Public Service Delivery (both physical and digital), Digital Transformation and Administrative Simplification. In addition, it is responsible for the national modernization financing program focused on the efficiency and effectiveness of public administration.
This Agency’s work focuses on the improvement of regulatory policy and procedures, the development of best practices on public participation, and the improvement of citizens’ and businesses’ quality of life through digital government and public participation. AMA leads areas such as electronic identification (eID), interoperability, open data, ICT strategy and governance and other building blocks of the digital government in Portugal.
As a national public agency, AMA’s work is at a national level as well. The currently existing 432 Citizen Spots are spread nationwide, in order to reach all the Portuguese population - roughly 10 million people.
Recently, a Citizen Spot was opened in Paris, France, where a large number of Portuguese immigrants reside. Also, it is expected to open a new Citizen Spot in São Paulo, Brazil, as well as two others in London and Brussels during the present year. As such, we can say that this initiative has the potential to reach at least two more million people.
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| 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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The strategy of implementation had its starting point with a regulation which provided a legal framework to the Citizen Spots, establishing rules for digital public services delivery, enshrining the assisted provision of digital services as its complement, and defining the responsible entity for its implementation and coordination (AMA).
Afterwards, AMA outlined an action plan that comprised two major initiatives:
Working along with numerous public and private entities – Social Security, Tax Authority, Civil Registry, telecom providers, etc., in order to redefine processes and create new or remodel existing digital services;
Establishing contacts with Portuguese municipalities (total of 308), parishes and post offices, with the intent of formalizing partnerships to launch Citizen Spots in their respective regions, in a cost-sharing model.
In the first six months of this project (second semester of 2014), a total of 125 protocols were signed nationwide to create and enlarge the network of Citizen Spots. These protocols defined responsibilities for the parties involved.
The physical location of the Spots, the required human resources, the marketing strategy and the maintenance costs were to be ensured by the host entity, while the coordinating agency (AMA) would supply the furniture (modular furniture pre-designed to maximize space, functionality and cost while being easily reckoned by citizens as a Citizen Spot), the necessary hardware, software and the training needed to ensure the public servants and private assistants that would work on the Citizen Spots had the know-how to deliver a wide range of very different public and private services in a consistent, educational and homogeneous way.
At the beginning, a dedicated Citizen Spot Unit composed of three persons worked on the communication with the different entities, which is nowadays much more agile and simpler, as the project is now well known in the Portuguese society.
Also, the Construction, Maintenance and Logistics Unit, as well as the Communication and Marketing unit were involved, in the design of the image/layout of the Citizen Spots, in order to make them appealing to citizens, easy to install in the diverse local facilities, and capitalizing on the expertise of AMA in the delivering of services - both digital (Citizen Portal, Entrepreneur Portal, mobile applications, among other) and physical (such as the international recognised and awarded Citizen Shops).
The Training Unit of AMA coordinated and trained around 2300 citizenship mediators. For this, AMA mobilized both internal and external trainers, and further put in place a model through which some civil servants received training to subsequently train others. This net of expertise was, nonetheless, constantly supervised by the AMA’s Training Unit.
All of this would sum up to around 20 human resources dedicated to these first two years and a half of the project.
Throughout 2015 and 2016, around 300 more Citizen Spots were created, ensuring such capillarity that all national territory is nowadays covered by this digitally assisted service delivery. Currently the growing network of Citizen Spots has 432 desks fully operational.
By the end of 2017, it is expected to have a total of 765 Citizen Spots installed throughout the country, hence ensuring coverage of 96% of the Portuguese municipalities, and 100% coverage of Portuguese districts.
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| 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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There was a wide range of stakeholders involved, from the very moment of the design of the Citizen Spot solution.
The Administrative Modernization Agency as the project coordinator, the 308 Portuguese municipalities that host the Citizen Spots, and the public and private service providers that work together to design the delivery of their services in a digital and interoperable way.
These latter include the utilities providers, the Social Security Institute, the Tax Authority, the Civil Registries Institute, the Public Servants Healthcare System, the National Labour Agency, the Institute for Mobility, among other that are involved in the setup of the network.
The support of the Minister of Presidency and Administrative Modernisation, and of the Secretary of State Assistant and for the Administrative Modernization, was also fundamental to support the initiative.
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| 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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Access to services is the first most successful output. 432 Citizen Spots were installed by March 2017 and it is expected to install approximately 335 new Spots until the end of the present year, ensuring a complete coverage of the national territory. This is incremented not only by the number of Citizen Spots available, but also by the growing number of services available at each Spot. At present, a Citizen Spot can deliver up to 200 different services, which include renewing a driver’s license, making healthcare appointments, obtaining criminal records, tax related services, registering intellectual property and changing your address, to name only a few.
The increase of digital literacy is another important result, proved by the continuous growth of digital services usage, both in traditional digital platforms and in digitally assisted Citizen Spots.
Both effectiveness and efficiency are also major outputs; the first reflected in a higher performance influenced by the reduction of the waiting time for services delivery, and the latter by the maximization of the already available resources and facilities, namely the ones already existing in local administration, hence resulting in a reduction of context costs. In this context, it is worthwhile to mention the investment in infrastructures and bandwidth along the territory, as the network was enlarged.
Trust - both in digital services delivery as a whole, and in the government as their provider - is another most important output of the Citizen Spots initiative, for several reasons: the ability of its human resources in providing the services as they are provided in traditional counters, the safety of the operations, ensured by advanced electronic identification tools already available in Portugal and developed by AMA, the transparency in the delivery of these services, since they are performed in a double-screen computer, allowing the citizen to monitor the steps taken to achieve the intended results.
This new model of bringing public services closer to the Portuguese population, including enhancing digital literacy and promptness to use electronic tools with the help of a citizenship mediator, allows citizens to benefit from the advantages of digital services regardless of their age, geography, education, etc.
All the above mentioned outputs are aligned with the SDGs’ objectives of equality, promotion of inclusive societies for sustainable development, build effective and accountable institutions, bring citizens closer to the government and, more practical, promote infrastructures throughout territories.
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| 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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Ensuring the necessary infrastructures and bandwidth along the territory was fundamental. So, as new Citizen Spots were born, the necessary investments towards this goal have been made.
Also, the services needed to be restructured in order to be integrated in the technological platform that supports the service delivery in the Citizen Spots. This required many entities to be involved, working together redefining processes and, subsequently, improving the procedures and service delivery.
Furthermore, the architecture of the Citizen Spots had to be defined in order to ensure uniform modular structures that easily adapt to most physical spaces. This guaranteed both a visual identification of the Citizen Spots throughout the country, while making sure that every town hall, post office, or other given facility, could easily install a Citizen Spot.
It should also be mentioned that the late financial crisis imposed serious budget restraints, and only through a solid cooperation and commitment between the Portuguese government and the several stakeholders involved to insure this project’s success.
Finally, there was the imperious need to guarantee that public servants and other assistants could perform a wide variety of services, in a homogeneous and educational manner, and with the same efficiency citizens can obtain in any traditional physical service delivery. The Administrative Modernization Agency developed a training program that fulfilled these requirements and is put into place each time a new Citizen Spot is opened.
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