Sardinian Municipalities online (COMUNAS)

Sardinian regional government, during the second half of 2005, was aiming to establish the new target for the implementation of the informative system of the local municipalities of Sardinia. This led to "Comunas”, which is not only a “network of municipalities” but also an online system for providing services to citizens and companies. Sardinian Region, the promoter of this new project, takes on its own the realization costs that, thanks to the involvement of the software back-office producers, are carried on with no obstacles or operative difficulties on the daily work of the inner administrative structures of the joining municipalities.

Policy Context

According to the current renovation process, the Sardinian Region started a strategic plan for the realization of specific programs that, thanks to the use of new information and communication technologies. The plan aims to: -reorganize the regional Public Administration and the automation of the administrative processes; -accelerate the innovation process also for the local autonomies and regional agencies; -ensure transparency, facility of access, sharing of actions and information of public interest; -improve the quality, effectiveness and efficiency of Public Administration and its services, provided to citizens and enterprises; -integrate the IT systems, improve sharing of data and good practices -delegate competences to the local autonomies while centralizing services, maintenance and assistance; -optimize the employment of the resources, using common infrastructures. On such aspects, the plan and its relative performed actions are financed by the Sardinian Region within its own programs about the “Information Society”. In this context, the importance of the investments gets relevance not only for the creation of a new regional information system, but also for the realization of a common digital infrastructure for local municipalities.

Description of target users and groups

Comunas is especially oriented towards the Sardinian municipalities of any dimensions and their citizens, towards taxpayers and business enterprises (SME) residing and operating in Sardinia. Comunas consents to local administrations, mainly to those of small and very small dimension, and with reduced economic resources, to provide themselves with an advanced standard of online services for their territory and to have an integrated network of advanced services of transparency, democracy and electronic government. Comunas enables citizens and enterprises to have a secure and controlled access to their data, both demographic, tributary, territorial or referring to financial reports or to the procedures estabilished between the local and regional administrations. The project aims to cover the whole sardinian territory, integrating services for the 100% of sardinian municipalities (377, for a global population of about 1.600.000 people) and companies.

Description of the way to implement the initiative

The project started with an experimental phase including very few technological partners and a reduced number of municipalities, in order to address all the issues and better define the process and architecture of the production phase. Then, the project continued with a consolidation phase where the results of the experimentation were taken and improved to a further, production-ready, level. After this phase, the system is opened to all the rest of the municipalities and to more partners, in order to integrate the relative services. All the phases are managed and ruled by the Sardinian Region, with the support of the local in-house company, SardegnaIT, which covers all the operational and technological aspects. Multi-channel issues: All the services provided by Comunas are available through the Internet by using www and web services technologies. Citizens and enterprises can consume its services through a W3C-accessible web portal and any internet enabled device. Every municipality which is able to connect its information system on the web can expose its services using the Comunas centralized portal, by simple web services integration. The availability of the services through the web could simplify also the creation of autonomous portals for the municipalities, which however isn't covered by the Comunas project. Municipalities afflicted by limited net access or with low bandwith available can duplicate their data periodically on the central servers or use ASP solutions as well.

Main results, benefits and impacts

Comunas created a network for providing municipality services to citizens and companies. This target was reached by building a central engine (the Comunas portal) which orchestrates the data flows between clients (citizens, SMEs...) and the municipalities. The portal offers a common, accessible and unique presentation to different kinds of services and municipalities, conforming to the new visual identity of the various portals of the Sardinian Region, ensuring a simple and effective communication to the users. It also makes clear the global mission of the Region and the municipalities in terms of Innovation and e-government. Technically, this task was achieved by a three layered web portal, a powerful content management system and a integration layer based on web services technologies. Common interfaces have been defined to estabilish standard rules of communication between the front end services (on the portal) and the back offices of the municipalities. The final release of those common interfaces was realized thanks to the positive results obtained during the experimental-phase, and also the support of various software houses. In fact, about 20 software producers and suppliers, both national and local, applied to the public call published by the Region, to accreditate themselves and their solutions (applications and technical support for the municipalities), in order to join the Comunas portal. Currently more than 110 municipalities joined the project. Some numbers are: -Over 165.000 registered VAT numbers (linked to the SMEs) -Over 900.000 demographic positions (citizens) -Over 500.000 tax positions (citizens and companies) -Over 220.000 financial invoices and movements about suppliers of the municipalities -Over 55.000 accessible acts and published local laws Municipalities afford no set-up costs to expose their services on Comunas. This leads to a sustainable model which can be easily repeated in others EU territories, providing state-of-the-art solutions and web presence to municipalities of any size with very low costs. Innovation: Comunas is probably the first Italian example of a Regional portal providing services of local municipalities, aimed to cover the 100% of them. The Sardinian Region assumes all the costs of the initiative. The initial solution is extended to the various municipalities by integrating Comunas with the existing local information systems. Such extension happens thanks to the direct involvement, through a public advise of accreditation, of software manufacturers and suppliers specialized on providing back office solutions for the local municipalities. Comunas will provide more advanced services for enterprises, thanks to the integration with the current SardegnaSuap portal (http://www.sardegnasuap.it). These services include a regional network to support the productive activities, creating single entry points to have information and submit documentation to the municipalities. Inside this plan, it has been created a regional catalogue containing practical guidelines to start a productive activity, directed to new entrepreneurs and for the treatment of the linked processes whithin the administrations. Online functionalities will be available to third-party Agencies (e.g. Fire Departments, Healthcare institutions) for viewing the proceedings, generating maps of the industrial areas with the insediative opportunities, consulting the showcases for the financial incentives.

Return on investment

Return on investment: Not applicable / Not available

Track record of sharing

Comunas is going to be published on the "Italian catalogue of the reuse" dealing with good e-government practices for the public administrations, maintained by the CNIPA (Italian National Center for the ICT in the P.A. - http://www.cnipa.it). This will allow every Italian administration to get the entire solution at very low costs, and benefit from the help and technical support of the Sardinian Region, if needed. Tipically, the solution is provided "as is" at no cost for the requiring administration; customizations, consultancy, training and other support activities are charged on the base of agreements between the involved parties.

Lessons learnt

1) Ideation of a proven and open organization model which has to include all the actors involved: formal agreements between the public players (Region, municipalities, associations of municipalities) 2) Special care about the small municipalities which usually don't have enough internal skills or resources to handle the complexity of an information system exposed to the citizens 3) Involvment of the enterprises and SME as technological partners, to support the implementation and maintenance of the various applications integrated and located into the municipalities. Scope: Local (city or municipality), Regional (sub-national)