On-line compilation of the administrative sources of azorean companies (BASE-NET)

The project is destined to allow azorean companies to fill forms in the internet with the information that for law are obliged to supply to the fiscalization services. All the information until then was filled in paper and its manual treatment implied a great effort in human resources. On the other hand, the existence of the databases allows the "Observatório do Emprego e Formação Profissional" to easily carry out another ability that is to treat statistically and to publish all the enterprise information in labour substance (official statistics). All this information is gratuitously available in the OEFP’s webpage.

Policy Context

Our policy is to try to modernize public services, providing a better communication between the public administration and the enterprises. If we want them to improve profits we need to turn bureaucracy much easier in order to help the companies to maximize their work and time. Our policy is also the technological innovation which is one of the main proposes of the European Union.

Description of target users and groups

Our area of work extends to all Azorean enterprises, as well as other companies which have headquarters outside of the Azores, but have establishments and workers in the Azores islands. This applies to all enterprises despite of their size and activity sector (presently there are 6000 enterprises with a total of approximately 53 000 workers).

Description of the way to implement the initiative

We don’t have any partnerships. The project is totally administrated by the "Observatório do Emprego e Formação Profissional", although the software was developed by a local small software house. Multi-channel issues: This project is totally based in online procedures.

Main results, benefits and impacts

At the moment eighty percent of the regional companies are using this facility. On the other hand the information is more reliable because the system it self has a process of validation rules of data entries and it provides a faster way of data retraction. We have also felt a good feedback from the companies' administrators. This process is in continues expansion and it is extending to knew functionalities according to the legal exigencies. Innovation: The real innovation consists in the accessibility of the local companies to our data base permanently available in the Internet thru a password given by our services to each one and in the possibility of providing the information on-line instead of filling-in paper formularies. On the other hand this process avoids redundancy of information applying the expression "ask once, use many" because the computer system supplies the last data Known, being only necessary to update it once a year.

Return on investment

Return on investment: Not applicable / Not available

Track record of sharing

As much as we know we don’t have influenced any other project and up to this moment we haven't established any partnership. Anyway, this is difficult to evaluate.

Lessons learnt

It's a good example of how to transform a difficulty (geographical dispersion) into an innovation opportunity; despite of being far from the great I&D centres a small region can innovate with their own resources; big solutions doesn't mean necessarily big investments. Scope: Regional (sub-national)