Raymond Sinnen, bourgmestre de Reckange-sur-Mess
sms2citizen pour téléphone mobile
sms2citizen permet l’envoi de messages courts par une commune sur n’importe quel téléphone mobile, sans frais, sur la base d’un abonnement volontaire, tour tel ou tel thème d’information. Il est résiliable à tout instant.
Une économie sensible des frais de diffusion de l’administration communale en résulte ainsi qu’une meilleure réactivité aux événements.
Pour lire cet article dans son intégralité, voir SIGIview, édition 3-2009
Joseph Schmit, secrétaire communal de la ville de Dudelange
Un fonctionnaire communal valorisé dans son travail
L’administration communale de 400 collaborateurs de cette ville du sud s’implique quotidiennement dans le projet SIGILive, ensemble des programmes visant à améliorer non seulement la relation avec les élus et citoyens (MaCommune.lu) mais aussi le fonctionnement interne ou intercommunal (« Intranet SharePoint ») et la gestion des finances (« GESCOM »). Ces novations sont étroitement coordonnées avec les ministères du Grand-Duché.
Ces changements ont une influence sur la perception du fonctionnaire local qui devient un accompagnateur, un facilitateur de la vie du citoyen, plus attentif à ses exigences en étant moins accaparé par les tâches d’exécution quotidiennes.
Pour lire cet article dans son intégralité, voir SigiVIEW, édition 1-2011
Octavie Modert
Minister for Administrative Simplification for the Prime Minister
At the end of 2011, citizens in over fifty communes were using macommune.lu teleservices. Is Luxembourg ready to simplify administrative procedures in the Grand Duchy, and create a true "e-government"? Admittedly the municipal dimension is less complex than that of the State and its many ministries. It is appropriate, however, that the national level is also covered in a coordinated way. The two main forums, namely macommune.lu and guichet.lu, must work closely together to enable citizens and businesses to complete their administrative formalities quickly and easily.
While Luxembourg has all the necessary technical skills, it is still necessary to define in a highly precise way the procedures within and between national and municipal authorities, and the interaction needed to provide faster, more efficient and more manageable online services. This is the logistical and human challenge of the "e-government" project, viewed as a model by the European Commission.
Another advantage of online administrative offices is multilingualism, essential in a multicultural country like ours: guichet.lu is accessible to citizens in French and German, and will shortly be available in Luxembourgish. The section for businesses is displayed in English and French. Macommune.lu, available in five languages, is an important tool for the successful integration of citizens of foreign origin. It helps them understand their host country and the Luxembourgish language better. In this context, the www.lod.lu (Lëtzebuerger Online Dictionnaire) project might usefully be integrated into the macommune.lu portal, thus promoting enthusiasm for our language and cultural life, so prominently featured on this site.
To read the full article, see the December 2011 issue of SIGIview , cover page photo.
"It is in all our interests that we succeed in interlinking administrative bodies and citizens"
Mr. Gambucci, the Syndicat intercommunal de gestion informatique (SIGI) is an important player for the communes which are members of it. What is its role?
"We offer a range of services based around town or area-level management for 103 communes that are members of the union: accounting, management of technical services, billing, management of population and civil registry. One of the most visible services for citizens is Macommune.lu. And on top of this, we provide the backbone of the computerised management of childcare service vouchers. Mr. Majerus, who managed the project at the Ministry of the Family, had contacted us to help in the actual organisation and implementation of the communal processes relating to childcare service vouchers and childcare centres. The system was set up in March 2009.
At the end of November, we are formally integrating Luxtrust into our systems, enabling citizens, civil servants and elected officials to use a secure identification system with electronic signature.
Using these tools, we help with mergers of communes, the work of social services offices nationally, the management of most unions, and we help our own parent ministry in the implementation of the new communal accounting plan, which is a multi-year financial plan. Of course, we provide training courses in these areas, in association with INAP (Institut national d’administration publique, ed.), and professional coaching from our agents to serve citizens through personalised supervision."
Macommune.lu was launched in late 2010 in two pilot towns. Where are you today?
"What is true in the private sector is also true for us. In other words, the speed of deployment and adoption of a solution is the key to its success. Within months, we managed to persuade 55 communes to use Macommune.lu. This represents a sufficiently critical mass to ensure the survival and future development of the solution. Of the 260,000 potential relevant citizens, around 30,000 are already active users. This may seem to be a small number in absolute terms. But in relative terms, this is more than 10% of the population, which is huge if you look at the European benchmarks! The 170,000 electronic requests processed by Macommune.lu have averted the need for an equal number of visits in person. This is just the beginning of a successful launch for our portal.
Generally speaking, Macommune.lu is a way to help build a general democratic environment. We offer an interactive solution that allows a more flexible dialogue between citizens and communes.
We are in a system with three stakeholders. Citizens have needs and require services. Communal support staff helps to meet these needs and are responsible for the performance of services. Elected officials are responsible for the success of the actions of their administration with regard to citizens and seek to measure their level of success. Macommune.lu is effectively an extension of the municipal public buildings for the citizen, with access to their data, allowing officials to act, and deputy mayors to gain access to decision-making tools."
You spent much of your career in the private sector. What have you taken from your experiences?
"From my experience at ArcelorMittal, I have retained a number of principles and ways of doing things that I have tried to bring with me. First of all, you must have the ambition to be the best in your class. In Luxembourg, it is certainly not always easy to have access to significant resources. With an equal need, other countries sometimes have ten times the resources we have. But our small size and access to key players make things considerably easier.
By reporting to senior management, especially the Finance Director, I also learned how to manage expenses, remaining prudent and focused. To do this, we must constantly rethink and optimise various business processes. In other words, I have tried to keep the instincts I gained in industry and the private sector to implement them in the public sector.
Our budgets, our model of expenditure, must be economically competitive with what is happening in the marketplace. Although compared with the cost of other bodies, it should be noted that our scope differs because of the constraints of running a public body, bids, commitments, approval times, etc. Whatever the reasons for this, at the end of the day we have the results and there is a cost."
Originally, the main SIGI 'product' was Gescom, a communal management tool.
"Yes, and in 2008 we devoted most of our efforts to stabilising and centralising its management. This tool is mature, stable and can be adjusted to requirements. We are now finding that demands for change are growing louder with the adoption of all the tool's functions: project management, cost accounting, inventory management - you name it. Amongst other things, this impact is due to the decision-making tools for financial reporting and performance we put in place to allow elected officials to have an overview of all the variables affecting their community business. It is they who are asking their civil servants to provide more expansive monitoring so as better to manage suppliers, projects, finances, human resources and grants.
The result is more informed decisions. On top of this, they quickly see the ramifications of their decisions. As a result of our tools, clients have content that is both analytical and predictive. Many projects are integrated in the multi-year plans. By providing them with a window onto the future, we enable deputy mayors to better weigh up their various decisions. Councils can act more quickly by consulting summarised statistics, rather than reflecting on dozens of disparate lines of budget items. This is where we see an excellent level of cooperation between the municipal financial experts and our supervisory ministry, which made possible this important step towards a future that can be planned to an increasingly higher degree."
You have to interact with many partners, in addition to communes - the various ministries and the CTIE (State Centre for Information Technology) are also 'obligatory' partners.
"We are an administration to which the communes have delegated the management of their computer systems. They therefore need us in order to function. In fact, we fill the same role for them as our friends the CTIE do for the State and the Ministries. This is why we often meet together. The purpose of these meetings is to determine how we tackle our work in the interests of the country's citizens. We coordinate ourselves in order to provide a single solution for Luxembourg, and not several solutions competing unnecessarily.
It is in all our interests that we succeed in interlinking administrative bodies and citizens. Imagine a case that needs the intervention of two communes and two ministries. It would make no sense if the citizen had to take four different steps to advance their case. They need a single entry point to express their needs. They then have to track the progress of the case, step by step. This is why there remains work to be done in terms of optimisation.
We must seek out and eliminate any redundant aspects in our work. By logging into their administration portal, people's known data - in accordance with Data Protection rules - must: - be available, with people only having to complete any missing information in order to make their request. Attached documents and signatures can be used to complete someone's request, in order to avoid unnecessary travel and to bring transparency to the implementation process.
This is why we have opted for Luxtrust. This is a good way of providing identification, and above all it uses people's signatures, which makes transactions easier.
We have no desire to compete with any other public stakeholder. We view ourselves as being complementary to them. We are but a cog in a large system working for the benefit of citizens."
CAREER PATH - Group work
After studying at the Boys' High School in Esch-sur-Alzette, Carlo Gambucci, now 47, received a Masters in Computer Science and Management at the University of Nancy 2. He began his career at what was at the time Arbed, as Head of Networks. "I worked in computers at corporate level," he says. "By way of group mergers - Arbed-Aceralia, Arcelor and ArcelorMittal - each time my role was to help the consolidation, control, finance, M&A and auditing departments to consolidate the data from the worldwide subsidiaries. This was done on a centralised platform, with 50,000 users, at 'Château Arbed', avenue de la Liberté."
He joined SIGI in September 2007. "I asked myself whether I wanted to bring something to a boss, or to my country. SIGI is a vector of productivity for the country, providing the information needed to build the foundations of electronic communication between citizens and the State. I saw a huge potential for simplifying administrative processes, and that is why I chose to come here."
Source: Paperjam
1 December 2011
In his welcome speech, SIGI Chairman Yves Wengler gave a quick overview of the history of the union since its foundation in 1982. Currently, 94 of 106 municipalities (remaining after the merger of 1/1/2012) are members of the union. It entered into a partnership with various Ministries, including the Ministry of the Interior, Housing, the Family and the Economy, for the transposition of national policy to local level. Since the initial applications were set up, which were essentially dedicated to management tools, many applications have improved services to citizens. The end result is macommune.lu - a platform for citizens to interact with their local authorities. A significant investment of 25,000 man days is made each year in the development and tweaking of these applications. To conclude, Yves Wengler listed the challenges facing municipalities, notably social and ecological, as well as the raised expectations among citizens. For those formulating policy, the difficult economic climate requires, first and foremost, better financial management of municipalities and, therefore, a new tool will be made operational for this in 2012.
Georges Kioes, public sector manager at Deloitte, then gave a rundown of the state of e-governance in Europe. Based on recent figures, Mr. Kioes highlighted the difference between the level of Internet access and its daily use in the relationship between citizens and the public authorities. Companies have been much faster to adapt to e-services than individuals. The general public often feels overwhelmed by all the information provided by the Internet, without getting the benefit from the possibilities of interaction. Availability, user-friendliness and ease of use are the key factors that will win over the general public. They should be able to see the advantages and the time savings. With this in mind, mobile applications on smartphones and tablets stand to play a crucial role in the future. Billions are being in invested throughout Europe to get to this stage, and it is beginning to bear fruit in terms of profitability. For example, the potential for savings identified by the European Central Bank with regard to the introduction of electronic billing stands at 0.8% of GDP! Luxembourg has been slow out of the blocks with regard to its growth between 2008 and 2010 - it dropped from 10th to 17th place in Europe. Speaking of "Best in Class", Mr. Kioes cited the United Kingdom and Spain.
Carlo Gambucci, Director of SIGI, began his speech with the following question: Are we ready to surmount these challenges? A municipality of a few thousand people obviously won't have the same resources as cities like London or Paris. The only way to obtain the critical mass necessary is to come together, just as SIGI is doing for all Luxembourg's communities. It is easy to see how modern telecommunications have changed habits, such as banking, online shopping, and travel organisations, etc. People send SMS messages and e-mails now - letters have become a something of a rarity. Demand generates usage. He reminded the newly elected representatives that they are the driving force behind change, and that they should make sure they communicate and promote new services properly to the general public. Carlo Gambucci also highlighted the crucial role played by civil servants in this process. They are the ambassadors for change, facilitating interaction and motivating the public to use these new technologies, because they are going to be the big winners at the end of the day. The more administrative tasks that can be automated, the more time there will be that can be devoted to the public - to listening and advising them. Carlo Gambucci then presented the range of possibilities offered by the new management tool in terms of financial analysis. Aside from forecast scheduling for the Ministry of the Interior, elected representatives will also have financial control panels that will help them to reduce risks, control expenditure and check revenue. They will be able to efficiently compare and monitor their efforts based on objective, comparable criteria.
To finish off, Carlo Gambucci arranged a meeting next year with the elected representatives to celebrate SIGI's 30th anniversary.
Press release (29.11.2011)
On 29 November 2011, the Minister for the Economy and Foreign Trade, Jeannot Krecké, announced that the website macommune.lu could now be accessed with LuxTrust products. To help make their administrative procedures easier, LuxTrust clients can now log in to the macommune.lu website for an experience that is just as user-friendly and secure as Guichet.lu or their bank account, thereby guaranteeing the protection and confidentiality of their personal data.
It is easy to log in to macommune.lu, whatever LuxTrust product you have. Logging in for the first time just requires identification using Tan Card (card sent out to households automatically by SIGI). This is synchronised with the LuxTrust Token (or any other LuxTrust product). All subsequent log-ins can be done with the LuxTrust product alone. 88,000 Tan Cards have already been sent out to the country's households.
From January 2012, a second macommune.lu service will enable subscribers to enter electronic signatures on their online administrative procedures using their LuxTrust product, on top of their initial log-in authentication.
Services using LuxTrust are now available in over 55 communes, reaching over 260,000 people.
120,000 people currently use LuxTrust products on a daily basis, above all for banking and official State applications. These products have multiple applications, as a single product is enough to access a plethora of services, be they official State services, banking applications - and now communal services.
During the LuxTrust introduction phase, macommune.lu users can contact SIGI staff for further information, or watch explanatory videos on www.macommune.lu.
Press conference from the Ministry for the Economy and Foreign Trade and the Syndicat Intercommunal de Gestion Informatique
Marc Lies, mayor
80% of the population has Internet access at home via a computer, but also, more and more often, via a mobile phone (iPhone, etc.) or a tablet (iPad, etc.). Owing to ‘macommune.lu’ services and the close involvement of municipal civil servants, the inhabitants of Hesperange are able to deal with an ever increasing number of administrative procedures without going to the municipal offices.
Furthermore, the fact that more than 760 people have signed up to receive text messages or SMS sent by the municipality (‘sms2citizen’ service) demonstrates the growing success of the initiative.
To read the full article, see the 2-2011 issue of SIGIview
Alex Bodry, Mayor
Dudelange's membership of the macommune.lu project forms part of the meticulous work carried out by the city to reform the services offered to the public, to simplify access to and improve the public's perception of the ''Biergercenter''. Access to the ''Biergercenter'' via the Internet allows more time-efficient dealings (online administrative procedures), greater transparency of the commune's affairs and renewed participation therein.
Dudelange has been organising IT and Internet user training courses for the past eight years. 2000 certificates have been awarded to participants, all ordinary citizens residing in the commune. Dudelange will be continuing this action to facilitate the use of ''MaCommune.lu'' and new technologies in general.
At communal administration level, collaborative work via ''SharePoint'' will minimise the response time of the civil servants employed by the commune. Staff who receive training for this program manage their tasks with greater ease.
To read the full article, see the 1-2011 issue of SigiVIEW