Lviv Citizen Portal: Digitalizing the Delivery of Government Services to the Public

Business Challenge 

Lviv City Council wanted to “bring city government and public services to a completely new level”, according to Andrii Sadovyi, Lviv City Mayor and Head of the Lviv City Council. They approached Infopulse (now known as Tietoevry Create Ukraine) to develop a citizen portal that would digitalize the delivery of administrative services to the public. 

There were additional challenges in integrating the solution with external systems, as our team received different data arrays from varied services and had to connect disperse administrative, public and banking systems. E.g., the digital signature is not connected with the national passport information yet, so after authentication, the system can’t receive data that is mandatory for some of the services. Thus, we had to create different operating scenarios for various services requests depending on authorizations used. 

Solution  

Our expert team was instrumental in delivering the solution from idea to the implemented and functioning system. The responsibilities covered business analysis, architecture design, implementation, and maintenance (3rd line support) of the solution. 

The range of online services covers all of the essential administrative functions: 

• Receiving certificates and documents online  
• Arranging appointments with civil servants or city officials  
• Paying for the utility services  
• Joining the housing queue  
• Checking the status of application for a service  
• Enrolling children in kindergarten, and some others.  

One of the key innovations of this project is secure user authentication via digital technologies, namely Bank ID, Mobile ID, and digital signatures (EDS). We also provided a possibility to exchange requests between different administrative agencies and track request status. 

To enhance digital customer experience, we implemented a mobile version of the cabinet, enabling anytime-anywhere access for the citizens on any handheld device. 

In order to facilitate the future maintenance of the system, we developed a services constructor allowing portal administrators to alter the web and email templates without any vendors’ involvement. 

Nowadays, it is important to not only talk, but also to accomplish specific goals. Today we are honored to jointly present Citizen Cabinet Online Portal. The citizens of Lviv or of other cities can now directly contact the city via the Internet and get a certain quantity of services within the shortest time. We are the first in Ukraine to go this way and we would like our other colleagues to join us as soon as possible. Our goal is a 100 percent e-Government. 

- Andrii Sadovyi, Lviv City Mayor and Head of the Lviv City Council 

 Technologies & Tools  

• Microsoft SharePoint 2013 
• OWIN Web API 2.2 
• ASP.NET 4.5 
• Microsoft SQL Server 2012 
• XML 
• XSLT 
• OAuth 2.0 
• JavaScript 
• JQuery. 

Infopulse (now known as Tietoevry Create Ukraine) is a reliable partner and innovative IT services provider of Lviv City Council. With their help, Lviv City Council has become one of the first local municipalities in Ukraine to provide electronic administrative services for the citizens. In 2015, our partners developed the multifunctional and secure Online Citizen Portal, based on MS SharePoint technology. The Citizen Portal empowers Lviv citizens with simplified online access to public and social services and allows them to interact with the city’s administration online. As a result of operational excellence, Online Portal has won the confidence of the Lviv citizens. 

- Andriy Moskalenko, Deputy Mayor of Lviv 

Business Value 

Lviv City received a stable, user-friendly solution that provides self-service e-governance features to the public and helps significantly minimize human factor. As of April 2017, the portal had over 150 online administrative services and saved the time of the citizens and the city’s expenses enabling direct contact with the administration and government agencies. 

The portal provided the following benefits: 

• The solution is designed to support a wide range of services for both Lviv city administration and other government agencies (Ministry of Internal Affairs, State Fiscal Service, etc.) to the citizens.  
• The system was designed with flexibility and scalability in mind, allowing us to add new services and features to the system on the fly, without the need to involve programmers, thus significantly reducing maintenance costs.  
• The system meets the multi-tenancy requirements and, as an extra benefit, can be deployed for any city, with the possibility to be altered/redesigned according to the needs of any community.  
• The portal offers the flexibility and security of logging in through most online identifiers that operate in Ukraine.  
• The cabinet can be deployed both on premises and in the cloud.  

Instead of talking (about fighting corruption), we need to implement certain procedures to mitigate all negative processes. While we are only at the first stages of e-government implementation, we already have some important and positive changes. Any resident, looking to get public or social service, should be treated with respect and diligence. We want to bring city government and public services to a completely new level. And while we talk about the Smart City approach, it’s not only about e-government. Innovations should be everywhere on all levels.

- Andrii Sadovyi, Lviv City Mayor and Head of the Lviv City Council 

This project could hardly happen without our partners and a reliable partner in need is a partner indeed. I truly believe that this project is our mutual success and success of Ukrainian people, marking another milestone on a way to democratic changes and digitalization of Ukraine.

- Ivan Korzhov, Deputy Head, IT Office