Hilversum, Apeldoorn, 21 November 2008 – The municipality of Apeldoorn implements Inter Access’ WebNext MidOffice Suite
This SOA Suite includes both standardised and customised components and allows the municipality to offer a large number of electronic services to citizens and enterprises. In addition, WebNext provides fast and efficient processing of citizens’ applications and requests. The new mid-office environment allows the municipality of Apeldoorn to further improve external services and optimise internal processes.
In 2010, the municipality of Apeldoorn wants to offer the majority of its services electronically to citizens and local entrepreneurs. This allows the municipality to respond to the demand of citizens and enterprises to be served fast and efficiently by their municipality. In this context, Apeldoorn chooses a real multi-channel approach, in other words: one phone number for all questions, one website for products and services, one physical counter where citizens and enterprises can ask all their questions, one text message number, and one email address for all digital mail and one post office box for all questions and/or complaints in writing.
With this approach, the municipality mainly wants to cut down on administrative costs. An important part of the approach is a heavy emphasis on ‘customer self-service’, which means the system is set up in such a way that digital processing allows clients to complete as many processes as possible on their own. Which channel is used is not important for making the information available. As a result, authorised users will receive the same information as regards content, regardless of the channel used – and in as much as the chosen channel offers the appropriate options. They can complete the same transactions and effortlessly change channels during the process.
Inter Access’ solution conforms to the Nederlandse Overheid Referentie Architectuur (NORA, Dutch Government Reference Architecture) and fits within the concept of a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). This was one of the reasons for the municipality of Apeldoorn to choose the hybrid mid-office solution WebNext as a SOA Suite development environment. The solution consists of two fully integrated environments. The standardisation platform provides access to components which can easily be integrated and which offer standard functionality for authentication (DigiD), back-office connections and service processes. The innovation platform, which consists of Oracle and FileNet components, will be used to realise municipality-specific objectives which are not possible (yet) with the standardisation platform. This approach gives the municipality of Apeldoorn the freedom to decide for each component in the application structure whether it will be developed as a SOA custom component or whether a standard eGovernment Service can be used.
By now, more than 28 municipalities in the Netherlands, the equivalent of more than two million citizens, are using the WebNext MidOffice Suite.
The Apeldoorn heeft Antwoord (Apeldoorn has the Answer) programme is a municipality wide project to improve Apeldoorn’s services and client contacts. Based on the agreement, the next six months will be used to build the foundations for most of the results to be achieved, after which the results will become visible for the clients.
“The fact that Apeldoorn chose our WebNext MidOffice Suite again confirms the width and depth of this innovative solution,” says Han Dieperink, Manager Strategy & Business Development at Inter Access. “We are looking forward to working with Apeldoorn to make this mid-office project a success which will really improve services for citizens and enterprises."
Lammers van Toorenburg Benelux PR Anja BreunisPhone: +31 (0)30 656 50 70E-mail: interaccess@lvtpr.nl
Inter Access B.V.Lindy DragstraPhone: +31 (0)35 688 84 54E-mail: lindy.dragstra@interaccess.nl