Maribor Pilot: Workshop with public service providers

A workshop on how to improve e-services for citizens and develop a single-entry-point was organized in the framework of development of Maribor pilot with representatives of public infrastructure and service providers. The event was held in Maribor, on 29^th March 2018, and was hosted by URBAN INNO partners E-zavod and Municipality of Maribor. Consultation with public service providers (utility, waste management, district heating, waste water, public transport, tourism, graveyards) was organized with 3 goals:

• To show participants the best practices and importance of offering e-services to citizen
• To jointly define objectives of the end-user involvement process which will provide an input for pilot project  and Urban innovation action plan
• To jointly define the process of end-user involvement in the improvement of public services (with focus on ICT services).

The findings of the workshop were that all public service providers are offering different e-services for citizens, but their use is rather low. Also, it was concluded that there is no coordination among public service providers at development or implementation of e-services which causes confusion on the side of end-user (each citizen could use more than 10 e-services, each with different entry-point, username, password etc.).

Other conclusions of the consultation were as follows:

• Public service providers should co-ordinate the development and implementation of services to provide more transparent and user-friendly service for citizen – the objective is to create a “single-entry-point” for the citizens where they can access all e-services
• E-services should be upgraded to make them more usable by involving end-users into the process. Target groups of end-users should represent youth, active population and elderly.
• End-users need to be better informed and educated to use e-services on higher scale
• Public service providers will consider setting-up of a club of end-users so they would have permanent contact with end-users

Group of public service providers will continue to meet on regular basis to tackle the above-mentioned issues, the process will be facilitated by URBAN INNO project team.