A portal for SME and freelance workers (FPSME)

Pme.service-public.fr is a measure of the governmental plan of simplification for the SME (small and medium-sized enterprises) launched in june 2006 by the French Minister of SME. It enriches the services offered by service-public.fr, the French civil service's official portal created in October 2000. Focused on SME needs, pme.service-public.fr is the entrance point towards contents and practical E-services available on public web. Its mission consists in informing SME on their rights and their obligations, making easy the achievement of their procedures, in particular on line, and in directing them towards the appropriate organization or service to deal with. This portal is leaded by the French Ministry of SME, carried out by La Documentation française (French Prime Minister Service) in collaboration with others ministries or public organizations.

Policy Context

Pme.service-public.fr has been developed according the governmental plan called “Plan PME 2007” that is dedicated to simplify administrative procedures. It has been initiated in 2006 by the Minister of small and medium-sized enterprises. Its goal is to provide support to companies in their expansion. This program is a consequence of the high level of public costs directly related to administrative complexity that damages small companies. A European Commission survey estimates that 3% of the European GNP is concerned. Competitiveness that derives from simplification is not the only purpose. Indeed, this program has also been developed to make public administration simpler, more transparent and friendlier. It’s part of the French administration modernization policy.

Description of target users and groups

The target groups of the portal are the SME (small and medium-sized enterprises, less than 250 employees), the very small enterprises (less than 20 employees) and the freelance workers. Very small enterprises and freelance workers (2 300 000, either 96 % of the companies, 4 000 000 persons) are priority targets because they are the most precarious and those which have difficulty in getting information, in particular administrative information. Another priority target is entrepreneurs who want to start up a business. In 2006, 322 270 enterprises have been created in France.

Description of the way to implement the initiative

The Ministry of SME which has initiated this project, is the portal pilote. It set the strategic objectives in collaboration with La Documentation Française and with the Administrations partners’ representatives. All of them are member of the board committee. The Ministry of SME is also in charge of partnerships' development. La Documentation française is in charge of portal contents, and, to achieve its goal, it coordinates partners’ production. It is also a producer of many contents, and, for the technical part, the operator and the webmaster of the website. Last, La Documentation française is in charge of promoting the portal along with the Ministry of SME. The administrations partners work on the conception and realization of the features. Each administration participates depending on its field of competences. Local services which are co-branding partners of service-public.fr and the Centres Interministériels de Renseignements Administratifs (CIRA, attached to La Documentation française in may 2006) update the local data (local administrations addresses and office hours). Multi-channel issues: Pme.service-public.fr is produced with a content management tool : COPERIA (COProduction En Réseau de l'Information Administrative). COPERIA is an interdepartmental extranet which allows civil services to work in network to enrich and update features and “address books”. The contents produced in COPERIA are published on pme.service-public.fr, they also feed a database used by the operators of “3939, Allo Service Public” to answer to the citizens questions raised by telephone. Last, with the Co-branding principle, local websites as prefectures and local authorities can diffuse pme.service-public.fr contents produced with Coperia and enrich them by complementary local data. Because all information is managed with the XML standard in “COPERIA”, it’s easy to publish, for example, paper compilations of administrative procedures.

Main results, benefits and impacts

Evaluating is difficult as the portal is in service since two months. Portal visits have doubled compared to last year (comparing to Service-public.fr “professional heading” that Pme-service-public.fr replaced). Between april the 4th (2007) and may the 14th (2007), portal home page had been visited 80 819 times compared to the 38 186 times of the service-public.fr “professional heading” home page on the same period. “Procedures for professionals” heading which was also a heading of service-public.fr, recorded 28 441 visits against 4 689 visits in the same period of 2006. Between april 2007 and may 2007, the portal had totalized 200 000 visits. Four of the twenty three features available in the “professional heading” of service-public.fr have been recasted and enhanced with the administrations partners (“To Create his own business” with the Agence pour la création d’entreprise, “Export” with the Agence pour le développement international des entreprises, “Public works contracts” with the Direction des affaires juridiques du Ministère de l’économie , “Customs procedures” with the Direction générale des douanes du Ministère de l’économie). This work is in progress for the others features : each feature will be enhanced in collaboration with the appropriate administration or public organization. The “news heading” has been also considerably developed, the challenge is to keep the users constantly informed of the last rules, the new services and the administrative deadlines. Last, a new step was reached in terms of users orientation with the “address books” (to find the appropriate administration) combined to the personalization tool (“geographic preference”) that give fast information on local administrations addresses and office hours. Innovation: - Accessibility : pme.service-public.fr has been developed to satisfy “bronze level” accessibility criteria (Accessiweb referential). - Contents syndication : pme.service-public.fr is based on a fundamental principle : capitalizing competences and expertises of each administration and mutualise administrative information production with the contents syndication technology. This feature is still in its development step. At the end, the administrations partners will produce contents for their own website that will be automatically published on pme.service-public.fr. - Geographic preference : with this personalization tool, users can get personalized informations about local administrations addresses and office hours.

Return on investment

Return on investment: Not applicable / Not available

Track record of sharing

We can not answer this question because the portal has been launched in april 2007.

Lessons learnt

1) The portal has been developed in 6 month, between October 2006 and March from this year. Calendar was respected. 2) It was a low cost project (46 000 euros). 3) The project was successfully achieved mainly due to administrations partner’s mobilisation and investment. It’s a real work in network with others public actors to build a better service to SME and freelance workers.

Scope: National