Launched in October 2000, Service-public.fr is the French civil services' official gateway. It aims to give citizens access to all administrative information on-line. Its objective is above all practical: to answer questions posed by citizens to make their contact with the civil service more user-friendly. The Service-public.fr gateway has been developed as part of the government’s action plan known as "preparing France to enter in the information society" and the entire civil service is involved in the production of the portal.

Description of target users and groups

Citizens, professionals and business.

Description of the way to implement the initiative

The portal is produced by Documentation Française in association with the Prime Minister's office and the Civil Service and State Reform Ministry. The ministries are represented at the steering committee (chaired by the interministerial delegate for State Reform) and local services also participate in the development and enhancement of the service

Technology solution

Service-public.fr uses the XML standard, and thanks to it numerous partnerships and derived products have been developed. XML standard allows thus a multi-channel access to the reference national database on administrative information.

Main results, benefits and impacts

The site has practical guides classified by themes, various directories and links to access the texts of laws, public reports and job offers in the civil service. With more than 2,5 millions monthly visits, Service-public.fr is already the favourite daily tool to find administrative information or on line services in France. Since its creation, the portal has been improved according to the users’ wishes collected each year through an online questionnaire.

Return on investment

Return on investment: Not applicable / Not available

Lessons learnt

Lesson 1. Using standard XML, numerous partnerships have been developed with different levels of the public administration, allowing a profitable information sharing. Lesson 2. The geographical personalization of the rights and procedures guide and the co-branding are the best demonstration of public information sharing between national and local public services to better serve the citizen.

Scope: National