Certification of accomodation eligibility in Prato (ETHNICITY)

Cause of the wide of immigration phenomenon in Prato town, the municipality has to carry out thousand of pratices about certification of accomodation eligilibity every year. Those certificates are necessary for different purposes: job, study, healtcare, familiar re-unification,.. We realized a software to rationalize the job of the deputed internal offices (collecting existing information in DataBases about the estate in the territory), to make friendly interaction with the applicant via SMS and email, to contract the release time, to decentralize the release of the certificate.

Policy Context

This case fits into a local strategy to substain immigrated citizens helping their integration. Can also be classified in inclusion policies and it produces benefits directly to the citizen and to the municipality.

Description of target users and groups

1) immigrant citizens living in Prato at 31/12/2006 from: Europe 6.120 people (27,43%), Africa 2..623 people (11,76%), America 578 people (2,59%), Asia 12.983 people (58,20%) 2) association helping immigrants 3) local governament offices

Description of the way to implement the initiative

we have no partners involved in this case Multi-channel issues: the system uses the following instruments: - PC equipped with a printer, internet and email (to collect the instance, to process the pratic, to comunicate via email, to print the certificate) - mobile phone on which the citizen receive the sms

Main results, benefits and impacts

-we release 200 certificates per month -the release time for a certificate is now max 15 days (before it was 30/45 days) -the citizen is istantly notified with an sms when the certificate is ready -the certificate can be taken not only in the deputed office but also in one of the hundreds T-Serve point in the territory, the nearest to the citizen (T-Serve is a web-based system used, via PC and internet ,from several accreditated shops in the territory to furnish a lot of services like payment of local taxes, ...) Innovation: In this case we interact with the citizen in a new way, we comunicate via sms and email the outcome of an istance, we allow to take the certificate immediatly when is ready and as near as possible from when the citizen is located.

Return on investment

Return on investment: Not applicable / Not available

Track record of sharing

we would appreciate to share our experience and our technological skill to support other public administrations interested in our case.

Lessons learnt

-rationalise the work for becoming more efficient -interact with the citizen in a new, easy and more friendly way -reuse of different stuff ( from info stored in our databases about estate for other purposes, to other services like T-Serve or software component like mail-sender and sms-sender) Scope: Local (city or municipality)