Recommends simplification of online services
The websites of Austria’s municipalities need to be harmonised, recommends a working group focussing on user-centric eGovernment services. The group advises municipalities to agree on the key to be provided and how this should be presented.
Citizens have strong ties with municipal administrations, the Bürgerzentriertes eGovernment (BUEGO) working group writes. They consult their administration’s websites expecting immediate answers to a range of questions, such as time tables for waste collection, and information about medical care. According to the working group, the way in which Austria’s municipalities offer this information is neither systematic nor universal.
The working group recommends developing best practices, and agreeing on the bare minimum of content, structure and provisioning of eGovernment services. They urge making such services available in multiple ways, providing examples in HTML, XML and JSON. These are three alternative ways to combine human-readable and machine-readable information.
The expert group is comprised of six municipal and one central government representative.