The project “Carta Regionale dei Servizi” – CRS_FVG, has distributed a “services card” to all the citizens of Friuli Venezia Giulia. This smart card is compliant with the National Services Card (CNS) standards, and has entailed the development of an integrated system for the card’s life cycle management.

The cards are valid as health care cards, European health insurance cards and tax code cards. Since they have been distributed to all FVG resident citizens, the impact indicator on population is equal to 100%.

CRS is a unique tool for secure access to both regional and national services (such as: National Revenue Agency (Agenzia delle Entrate), an example of institutional cooperation and optimization of public resources. The project has been realized thanks to an agreement signed among the FVG Regional administration, the National Revenue Agency, the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Italian Certification Authority.

Thus, FVG succeeded in reaching the common objective of developing and distributing a high-technology tool with many functionalities, avoiding the useless and expensive tools duplication having analogous functions.

Since it is one of the first services card implementations, the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance refers to it as the standard for services cards at a national level. The CRS_FVG organizational model is the basis of a new Card Management System (CMS) that can be easily exported not only to other regional administrations in Italy, but also to other European countries.

From 2007, the CRS portal, http://cartaservizi.regione.fvg.it, has been online, enabling citizens to have access to:

Choose/change one’s physician; one’s health personal data; one’s vaccination records.

To access the services, citizens simply insert PIN code for strong authentication.

Apart from the ID card, CRS is the only tool which entirely meets Digital Administration Code (Law n.82/05) art. 64 requirements as far as security and privacy regulations.

In April 2007, FVG started distributing free CRS readers. Readers are needed to interpret the digital certificate contained in the card microchip, enabling strong authentication and consequently the access to online services.

In 2007, FVG made available the first set of innovative services. From then on, it constantly updates and expands the project portal, analysing and planning the development of new services.

Now, the available services refer to the following phases of citizens lives:

being citizens, staying informed; working; moving; online payments, spare time and cultural activities; health care

Actually, the project is SPCoop compliant and integrated with INTERPRANA, a services cooperation project, enabling the secure personal data exchange between regional local administrations and enterprises through service agreements complete with semantic and ontology annotations.

At Forum PA 2009, CRS_FVG was awarded as a best practice within the 2012 egovernment plan by Minister Brunetta.

Some figures:

75.000 free readers;

7.000 housewives and pensioners trained;

funds granted for PC purchase (50% value, max 500 €);

787 CMS operators trained;

729.000 portal accesses;

270.000 accesses to job Network;

13 million Euro contributions to 28.000 families;

benefits and impacts

More than 50% of cards were activated. A powerful hi-tech effort made CRS fully compliant with today’s major OS: Windows 98/2000/2003/XP/ME; Windows Vista; Apple MacOSX; Debian/Ubuntu; Fedora/Red-Hat. All drivers and software can be freely downloaded. A toll free number and a dedicated e-mail address (cartaservizi@regione.fvg.it) are available.

lessons learnt

Lesson 1: be transparent

Lesson 2: always put target group interests first
Lesson 3: feedback is essential/listening is more valuable than talking.
Lesson 4: do the right thing at the right time;

Lesson 5: roadmap the project first, lead in the right direction after.

Lesson 6: if you have it you’ll use it

Policy Context

Legal Framework:

-          Law n. 241 of 1990 - New rules on administrative procedures and on the right of access to administrative documents

-          “Decreto legge” (Law-decree) n. 163 of 1995 «Urgent measures for simplification of administrative procedures and improvement of efficiency in public administration»

-          Gov. decree 05/19/95 – General reference scheme «Charta for public health services»

-          Guidelines N. 2/95- Implementation of the Services Card in the National Health System

-          Pres. decree n. 445 of 2000

-          Law n. 326 of 2003

-          Decree of the Minister for the Interior, the Minister for Innovation and Technology and the Minister for Economy of 12/09/04 on "Technical and security rules for technology and materials used in the production of the National Services Card"

-          Leg. decree n. 82 of 2005, “Code for digital administration”, updated by leg. decree n. 159 of 2006

-          Directive 1999/93/CE by the European Parliament and Council, 13 December 1999on a community framework for electronic signatures

-          Law  n. 296 of 2006 “Indications for the production of the State yearly and multi-year profit and loss account” (so-called Financial law 2007)

-          Law n. 244 of 2007 “Indications for the production of the State yearly and multi-year profit and loss account” (Financial law 2008)

Technical Framework:

-          DPR 2 marzo 2004 n. 117

-          International Standards Organization ISO/TC215 Health Informatics

-          The European Committee for Standardization (CEN): CEN/TC 251 Technical Committee for Health Informatics

-          Gov. decree 04/01/08 “Technical and security rules for the Public Connectivity System (SPC)”

-          IHE- Europe Integrating the Health Enterprise (IHE Patient care coordination framework PCC-TF). Within Europe Connectathon 2008, the health care IT industries largest interoperability testing event, Insiel obtained the IHE/XDS Certification. IHE is also the representative of an industry consortium of more than 30 companies, including Insiel, that participates in the epSOS project

-          epSOS European patients Smart Open Services Project (Connected Health Framework Architecture and Design Blueprint). The CRS FVG model is part of the European epSOS project as it fulfills its requirements and eligibility criteria.

-          SPCoop certification of the Public Domain Gateways System, by the National Agency for Digital Administration (CNIPA), obtained on 04/30/2009.

Political/socio-economical frameworks

-          i2010 Strategy,  to reinforce innovation and investment in ICT research, major driver of the economy, and promote inclusion, public services and quality of life. i2010 is part of the Lisbon Strategy to make Europe a more competitive and dynamic knowledge-driven economy

-          Ministerial Declaration 11 June 2006, Riga, Latvia: information and communication technologies (ICT) are a powerful driver of growth and employment.

eGovernment programmes, policies and strategies at national level

-          Directive of the Ministry of Reforms and Innovation in Public Administration concerning data exchange between public administrations and publicity of exchange activities

-          eGovernment 2012 Plan in accordance with objective 17 of the “Charta of Services”.

eGovernment programmes, policies and strategies at local level

-       Government Programme of Friuli Venezia Giulia’s president, Mr. Renzo Tondo: Yearly management Operational Plan (POG), Strategic 5-year Plan (2008-2013).

Description of target users and groups

Target users are of Friuli Venezia Giulia citizens.
FVG Region lies in the extreme northeast of Italy. By the end of 2008 it had a population of about 1.200.000 inhabitants. The effect of demographic and epidemiological transition has been particularly severe in Friuli Venezia Giulia. More than 25% of population is over the age of 65 and more than 75% of these had at least one chronic disease. The FVG Region features one of Italy’s most extended and integrated health information systems. All health data collected by the system are linked to a civil registration service and each inhabitant is identified by a unique code (tax code).

Therefore, the first online services available have been in the health care field. A particular effort was made to develop a user-friendly interface, compliant with the W3C standard for accessibility and usability and with the Italian law regulating the field, the so-called Stanca Law, thus providing easy-to-use services, common to different agencies and available to all citizens.

Another important target group taken into account is made of young people and their families. The project portal enables access to an area dedicated to the young people’s world and to school. Four secondary scholastic institutes of the Region are experimenting the possibility for students and their families to access both class registers and single professor registers online (communications from the School, presences/absences, disciplinary notes, marks, assigned homework, can be consulted on the portal, as well as the “classmates” communities).

To encourage and explain the use of the online services, the Region used quick and simple communication tool: it published 15 simple and amusing videos on the “VideoHelp” section of its portal, called “Videohelp: the videos that simplify citizens lives”. (www.videohelp.regione.fvg.it). The videos explain how to access the portal, with which tools, how to use the services, how to pay online, etc.

Having obtained good results the regional administration decided to use this tool for further initiatives, by creating a specific portal that can be consulted at www.videohelp.regione.fvg.it.

To facilitate each citizen’s approach to pc use and internet, particularly the elderly people, the Region signed an agreement with Eldy aiming at customizing their software.  

To use Eldy FVG, citizens simply use their smart card (without having to bother with user id and password, which are less practical) and can easily find the email addresses of the public bodies of interest (municipalities, provinces, regions, health districts, etc.), access the online regional services without having to know the urls or e-mail addresses, simply clicking on buttons to get in contact with the public administration they need.

Description of the way to implement the initiative

Effective coordination and decision-makingThe Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia has always been conscious of the importance of eGovernment considering it as a strategic tool for the growth of regional territory and efficiency in public administration, a driver for the improvement of services, for participation, social inclusion and reduction of digital divide. The central Department for Organization, Personnel and Information Systems has coordinated all regional initiatives in the eGovernment field.
It is the director of the eGovernment Service, Mr. Maurizio Blancuzzi, who is responsible for the decision-making and the coordination of all the activities related to the CRS_FVG project.

Partnership strategy Three types of partnerships are foreseen in the strategy adopted by the Region:

- agreements signed with different local administrations (i.e. municipalities, chambers of commerce, health districts, …) and national administrations (i.e. National Revenue Agency, INPS and INAIL), in order to increase the number of horizontal and vertical service solutions available through the portal and to encourage project re-use. The CRS FVG model was adopted by the Region of Sicily following an agreement signed between the two Regions.
- a network of certified Solution Partners that operate on the market and can offer solutions that are compatible with the project platform (for authentication, signature, informative dossier and payments), the final objective being the constitution of a certified “Online Services Bank”, together with the Solution Partners.
- the partnership with Insiel, the ICT expert, assigned with the technological and innovative vision.

Implementation strategyPhase 1 Definition of the model of interaction with the National Revenue Agency. The first step was the necessary definition of a model of interaction with the National Revenue Agency to which the production and distribution of the smart cards on behalf of the FVG Region has been assigned.

Phase 2 Definition of the comprehensive model. The Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance refers to the Regional Services Card model of the FVG Region as the standard for services cards at a national level. The organizational model defined represents the basis for a new card management system which can easily be exported.

Phase 3 Development of the Card Management System (CMS). The CMS was developed in the third phase, enabling the technological infrastructure to manage the entire card life cycle linked to the databases of the National Revenue Agency

Phase 4 Development of the online services. Online services have been analyzed in terms of target group, development costs, maintenance costs, ROI, usability. The most convenient services have been developed first, in order to make them available for the first citizen card users.
Change Management Strategy

A Strategic Plan was prepared, containing a detailed dossier for each project, with the synthesis of the parameters of feasibility and impact related to the utilization plan of each service envisaged. For each service, the objectives, architecture, delivery mode and the qualitative and quantitative parameters have been specified (feasibility parameters, activation cost, management cost, savings index, ROI or savings foreseen/activation and management costs, compatibility criteria). The preparation of the Strategic Plan involved a phase of dialogue with the local authorities of the territory.

Management of ICT/Knowledge ManagementThe Region asked its technological partner (Insiel) to:

-          arrange the counters for card activation,

-          implement the CMS,

-          train and provide technical support to almost 800 operators,

-          call centre service,

-          arrange project informative sites,

-          develop the online services,

-          manage the technical partnership with the National Revenue Agency

-          and, furthermore:

-          accelerate the utilization of systems and solutions based on the CRS;

-          maintain the integrity and architectural consistency of the CRS_FVG model;

-          enable a direct answer by the main institutions involved and, in the other cases, a response through the certified Solution Partner, in order to enable the widest diffusion of services and multi-institution integration throughout the territory.

Human Resource ManagementThe working groups. The FVG Region, Insiel, the National Revenue Agency, the National Printing Office and Actalis took part in the first working group, charged with the definition of the comprehensive model. The second working group analyzed the issues related to privacy and included the FVG Region, Insiel, representatives from municipalities, civil registry experts, the Regional Health Care Agency and related Health Districts. The third group composed of the FVG Region, Insiel, the Regional Health Care Agency, the Health Districts and representatives of municipalities studied the card activation programme on regional territory.CMS operators. To access the online services, citizens need to request card activation, at one of the almost 300 desks distributed throughout the Region for this purpose. 809 are the operators registered in the CMS database. To enable the activation of the greatest number of cards, the Region contacted a number of institutions of the regional territory asking them to offer some of their offices for smart card activation. The institutions involved are the Health Care institutions, Regional contact offices for the Public (URP), Chambers of Commerce and many municipalities of the region.

Technology solution

An intense technological effort made the CRS fully compliant with today’s major operative systems: Windows 98/2000/2003/XP/ME; Windows Vista; Apple MacOSX; Debian/Ubuntu; Fedora/Red-Hat. All the drivers and software needed to use the CRS and its reader can be freely downloaded  from the portal. The technological and software components incorporated in the regional services card are:
- a microchip of 160 kbytes of ROM memory, structured in compliance with CNIPA (National Centre for Informatics in Public Administration) standards;
- RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tag capable of receiving and sending information through radio frequencies via contact less readers;
- electronic certificate enabling the “strong authentication” of the owner in compliance with art. 1 of the eGovernment Code (CAD – DLGS 82/05)

- a magnetic band incorporates information which correspond to the person’s tax code, surname, name, card code and a bar code that represents the tax code readable  by infrared readers.

- some Braille characters to facilitate use by blind citizens.

The card’s evolution will consist in an innovative tool, Multikey, containing an incorporated swipe fingerprint reader (up to  7 different), encryption software to protect sensitive data and 1 Gb of flash memory.
With reference to Interoperability (IO) and Application cooperation, the CRS_FVG project is able to establish the secure interconnection of Public Administrations and guarantee data exchange in a number of critical application/business domains for the delivery of services to end users.

With it’s subproject INTERPRANA, the CRS_FVG contributes to SEMIC-EU. The interoperability asset INTERPRANA that might be re-used by other pan- European projects, has been uploaded by the FVG Region in April 2008. The data model structure has been created by an Italian eGovernment initiative. The model is used to structure services and events in a SOA interoperability environment. The access to information and services is regulated by a federated service based on identity and roles authentication, policy definition and control in a multi-domain context.  
Application Cooperation (AC) is based on the exchange of messages between systems/applications based in different organizational domains, but usually in the same business domain. In order for it to work, the exchange of messages must be based on shared rules.
IO and AC services must guarantee that the application services belonging to different Authorities can talk to each other, according to the interaction paradigms and to the collaboration profiles which have been chosen for cooperation at national level.
The Card Management System is the technological core of the project. CMS is made of three components: the front-office, the back-office and the database component which is at the centre of the system.
The front-office component: used by Help Desk and Call Centre operators.

The back-office. The engine managing the data is the back-office component. It automatically elaborates the data coming from the front-office or from the archives of the National Revenue Agency.

The data system i.e.  the Card Management System database. The list of cards given out and the related personal data and information on PIN and PUK,  are managed by the Card Index in a secure mode with encrypted data. The second component of the database is the Service Index, which manages the list of available services.

The Requested Operations is the third database component. The activating operator does not interact with the database directly. The citizens requests are “queued up” and then managed by the data management engine.

The last database component  is the Loader, an engine that elaborates the data coming from outside the system.

Through the CMS the entire card life cycle can be monitored, from issuance to expiry, whether forced or natural.

Technology choice: Mainly (or only) open standards

Main results, benefits and impacts

1.      The main goals reached with the CRS project. On the citizens/enterprises side:- facilitating interaction with Public Administration (Region, Local Public Authorities, Health Care)
- benefits in terms of time gained by citizens, patients and general practitioners (GPs)
- reduction of digital divide
- enabling the meeting of job demands/offers: citizens, following authentication on the project portal, point of contact with the Job Centres, can access the virtual place where offers from enterprises and demands from citizen-workers meet.

- making online services available, 24hours a day, 7 days out of 7, concerning the areas of citizens everyday lives (being citizens, work, mobility, paying on line, health, spare time and culture). There are currently about 60 online services.
On the Public Body’s side: - simplifying internal procedures
- focusing on services for the final user and encouraging responsible participation in public life
- creating a vision of an innovative Public Administration, which develops the relationship with its citizens
Measurement method/tools used
Within the CRS_FVG project, Business Objects is used to elaborate statistics and dashboards were defined to help monitor the project. The use of the eGEP standard is being evaluated to measure the impact of the project.

Main results in terms of qualitative impacts (user satisfaction):
The qualitative impact on the users was measured through simple questionnaires asking to vote how easy to use the services are, leading to statistical reports measuring the effective impact on users.

Main results in terms of quantitative impacts (cost savings):The most consistent benefits are identified in:

-          citizens time saved, including time of transport

-          reduced workload at the front-end counters of each administration

-          procedures made more efficient

-          gain in productivity and re-allocation of front-end resources

-          potential elimination of the costs for the production, printing and distribution of paper documents

For example, workload has been reduced at booking centres or population registry offices thanks to the possibility of printing one’s own certifications from the internet. Furthermore, the smart card guarantees the identity of a user accessing the portal, with particular regards to the access to the National Revenue Agency, representing an important advantage of the interoperability existing between the two systems.
Another advantage is represented by the monitoring of those health services which are critical as to the proportion between cost and waiting time. To save time and resources another service was activated, which sends an SMS or e-mail as reminder of a booked health care exam or visit (72 hours before the appointment) for any booking made at a regional health care structure. To benefit from this service, the citizen must register his/her authorization, which can be withdrawn at any time.
Upon receipt of the message, the citizen may cancel the appointment if necessary, without incurring in the obligation to pay the entire fee of the visit, as generally happens in case of unjustified absence. In case of cancellation, the health care structure is able to re-organize its agenda so as to meet another citizen’s request. An average of 1200 SMSs are sent every month to remind citizens of appointments made through the One-Stop Appointment Booking Centre (CUP). The bookings can be consulted by the client as they are registered on the project platform.

Track record of sharing

1.      Mechanisms for exchange, transfer and replication:Article 69 of legislative decree n.82 of 7 March 2005, “Code for Digital Administration”, states that a public administration that possesses applicative programmes that have been realized on specific indications of the public buyer, is obliged to deliver the programmes, together with the source code, complete of all available documentation, free of charge, to any other public administration that may request them and intend to adapt them to their own needs.
A portal was created, “Re-use projects”, http://riuso.cnipa.gov.it/ , where public administrations can search for projects in the re-use catalogue.
The goal is to enhance and disseminate the solutions, in order to increase their impact and give maximum value to the efforts made.
The FVG_CRS project has a structure which makes it very easy to re-use. As a matter of fact, the solution’s essential components, both the technological and the organizational ones, can easily be exported by adapting them to the target administration’s reference model. You can already find the entire Card Management System, technological heart of the project, in the re-use catalogue, available to any other public administration. This possibility enables a greater standardization, more interoperability and cooperation between public administration and an undeniable economic advantage.

Since it is one of the first services card implementations, the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance refers to it as the standard for services card at a national level. The CRS_FVG organizational model is the basis of a new Card Management System (CMS) that can be easily exported not only to other regional administrations in Italy but also to other European countries.

Exchange: The Region of Sicily distributed a regional services card to its citizens and uses the FVG card management system.

Evidence of exchange: The FVG_CRS model was adopted by the Region of Sicily after the signature of an agreement between the two regions, signed in 2007. Other regions have also contacted the FVG Region, like: Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Piemonte and Marche.

Lessons learnt

Lesson 1-  be transparentAdministrative transparency towards citizens is one of the main principles at the basis of administrative action (art. 1 of law n.241 of 1990). Thanks to the CRS which enables access to the numerous regional databases (health register, fiscal register, population municipal register..) the PA becomes a sort of “transparent home” for the citizen. The CRS also enables the citizen to point out possible mistakes in his/her personal data to the responsible administration which can consequently update the concerned database.

Lesson 2 - always put target group interests firstAs highlighted by the debates of the past few years, Public Administration should be ever more “transparent” so as to focus more and more on the final user, without, nevertheless, disregarding global efficiency, especially, given the 2.0 context, as far as process efficiency is concerned. The vision should be more and more “client-centred”: citizens are the pulsing heart of our project.

Lesson 3 - feedback is essential/listening is more valuable than talkingIt is important to enhance direct dialogue with citizens. For this reason, the FVG Region created a call centre to gather requests from citizens and also an e-mail address to which citizens can write to send their feedback or make requests. Listening to citizens is essential to provide even more personalized services.

Lesson 4 -  do the right thing at the right timeIt isan important lesson for whoever but even more for a region like ours.In the same period in which the framework agreement between the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the FVG Region was signed for the distribution of cards in compliance with CNS (National Services Card) standards, the new health care cards also had to be distributed. It became clear that it was the moment to do the right thing at the right time, that is, to distribute a unique card to citizens, a sole tool that would enable access to both regional and national services.
Lesson 5 - roadmap the project first, lead in the right direction after
It is important to define a roadmap and therefore determine clear objectives for the medium and long term, and the related necessary technologies. It is consequently important to head for the right direction in order to reach the fixed goals.

Lesson 6 - if you have it you’ll use itA fundamental step in the evolution of the project was the distribution of the services card to the population. Furthermore, the very first cards distributed already incorporated the technology that was adopted by other Italian Regions only further on: microchip, RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tag and certificate, making the card a highly innovative tool. The strong authentication the card guarantees contributed in reassuring citizens and encouraging them to access the numerous online services, thus saving time and efforts, especially where less advantaged people, such as the elderly, are concerned.

Scope: Local (city or municipality), Regional (sub-national)