The State Government of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany implemented an upgrade and field test based on the existing good practice, the so-called “Zustaendigkeitsfinder” ("Responsibility Finder"), by introducing a semantic layer (securing semantic interoperability between national and local governments). As a result of this, the quality of services to citizens and businesses looking for a government service provided by national and/or local governments will be improved and maintenance of this system (updating information on these services) will be made easier and more efficient.
The field test in Germany aims at testing the developed components, evaluating them and demonstrating the Access-eGov (AeG) functionality especially to public authorities. Problems in setting up the field test, as well as in using or integrating the components in a real environment are identified and feedback from real service providers and citizens is collected during the field test. This knowledge can be useful for the further development of AeG components during and after the project as well as for other projects developing similar systems or implementing individual components of AeG. It is also useful for evaluating the current acceptance and applicability of semantic web technologies for government services in local governments in general. For the trial the marriage scenario has been selected.
In addition, the German University in Cairo, thanks to its location in Egypt, arranged a challenging test case - for example, a person with an Egyptian citizenship searching for e-government services provided by an EU country or wanting to obtain a work permit in an EU country. This text case includes all tasks of an intra-European scenario plus additional challenges of language and cultural differences.
German field test
The German field test is conducted in SH (Schleswig-Holstein). Involved are the SHG and different civil registry offices in SH.
The field test aims at designing, implementing and testing a platform that integrates information and eGovernment services related to marriage. Information from different sources will be integrated in one place so that it can be accessed easily by citizens. Furthermore, generally applicable information will not have to be maintained by each administration, but can be provided once and re-used many times.
The system is supposed to identify responsible registry offices with the help of a state-wide responsibility finder and to provide access to required information and eGovernment services offered by individual registry office and the federal state. More precisely, citizens will receive information on the required steps for marriage, a personalized list of documents to be delivered and the involved administrative services in general (both traditional and electronic).
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Results of the German field test:
The German field test focused on services related to the life event marriage. In the field test, the tools developed within the project have been tested in a real world environment. Eleven local administrations, from all over Schleswig-Holstein and of different sizes, tested the tool for semantically describing all the relevant government services involved in the scenario “marriage” (e.g. applying for marriage or getting a birth certificate). Citizens, registrars and IT experts tested the personal assistant client, an online application, which leads citizens through the administrative process and finds all the relevant services. They provided feedback on the application in a workshop (with 13 people); in think-aloud sessions including short interviews (with four citizens) and an online questionnaire (69 users).
The administrations have been introduced to the tool in a training session and managed to annotate their services successfully in the days following the training. In total more than one hundred services have been annotated and edited during the field test. Using the tool proved to be effective but can be made more efficient by improving its performance. Although the tests revealed that improvements of the usability of the tool are required, it could already be utilized by untrained users with the help of a short manual only. The annotated services have been made available to citizens via the personal assistant client.
The personal assistant client has been tested by the administrations responsible for marriages (registry offices), IT experts and citizens. The personal assistant generates for a citizen a personalized list of things to do in the process of getting married, it identifies the contact data of the responsible registry offices and it informs the user what documents and fees are required for each step in the process. The testers appreciated the functionality provided by the application and found the personalized information provided useful for the life event. The conducted evaluation revealed where the usability of the website still needs to be improved. For four weeks, a questionnaire has been available online to collect feedback from citizens who used the tool. The questionnaire revealed that users found the provided information about specific government services very useful but not as easy to find. The administrations involved in the field test acknowledged that the application should be provided to citizens in the future and agreed that the pilot application should already be made available to the public at www.persoenlicherassistent.de.
Overall results of online questionnaire:
