District of Neckar Odenwald

To make it as easy as possible for citizens could be the motto for a citizen-oriented Internet presence. EGOTEC Content Management System used by public authorities.

As a rule, management processes are usually annoying activities for citizens and the times in which they have to take care of them are often unfavourable. For this, the Internet should be an information centre for advance information. The citizen finds out the office which is competent for his management procedure, the contact person and the individual office hours with contact data. Furthermore, he is informed of documents he has to provide for this procedure or perhaps to procure in advance.

As a next step, advance procurement of the required forms via the Internet is a sensible addition. At least a PDF download should be offered. A disadvantage is the handwritten completion of forms and a lack of context-sensitive help for completion of the forms.

Exactly those problem areas had arisen regarding the current project of the District of Neckar Odenwald:

In the beginning, a plausible user guidance that could guide the citizen through the Internet presence, was particularly emphasised. In the next step a Content Management System was chosen to ensure that the necessary content was up-to-date. Simple handling was emphasised and, with regard to the quickly changing Internet, also flexibility and extensibility. However, the given budget should not be exceeded. Decision was taken in favour of EGOCMS 2.0 which already contains a lot of municipality-specific modules (trade directory, What can I get done where ...). The form editor available as additional module is based completely on HTML, i.e., the citizen is able to complete the form directly online in the web browser and submit it and also print a ready-to-sign version via print output. Help texts are available for each of the input fields guiding the citizen through the form.

At the beginning, 10 employees of the District Administrator's Office of the District of Neckar Odenwald will be responsible for maintenance. Due to operation largely corresponding to Word, the online editors will be able to familiarise themselves quickly and to concentrate on the quality of the content. The employees entrusted with this may already suggest improvements during the development phase of the Internet presence, this has already resulted in the project gaining momentum, which is desirable. In future it is planned to continuously extend the Internet presence as well as utilising it in the Intranet of the District Administrator's Office.

Thanks to the modular EGOTEC licence model it was possible to complete the entire project within the lower five-figure euros range.