New Service Delivery Platform Aims to Fix E-governance Lag Exposed by Pandemic

GxP, a customer-centric service delivery platform developed by NRD Companies, allows seamless inter-institutional data exchange and enables institutions to issue digital services independently.

December 10th, 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced countries around the globe to adopt digital solutions. However, even the seemingly well-functioning systems have failed when it comes to ensuring a smooth e-service provision.

For example, in Lithuania, a country that has developed one of the sturdiest IT infrastructures in the world, the national development institution INVEGA announced [3] in May that it is ready to issue loans to the tourism sector, but the actual process began [4] only in mid-July. In Japan, most administrative procedures are done [5] manually and require paper documents with stamps.

Lack of integrity

Mindaugas Glodas, CEO at NRD Companies [6], a global IT and consulting group of companies specializing in e-governance, said that such situations are caused by the lack of integrity of e-systems. According to him, the exchange of data between two e-service providers will remain problematic unless an automated system is implemented.

“If one state institution is about to provide a digital service and requires additional data from another institution that is not linked to it, there will be a significant delay”, said Mr Glodas. “In such a case, the citizen carries the burden and has to provide the necessary information himself or herself.”

Institutions themselves are also impacted. If changes in legislation oblige institutions to provide new or amended e-services, they are forced to find partners who can set up ad-hoc systems in a short period of time, which is usually labor-intensive and costly.

“The staff usually lacks the skills to make the necessary software changes to the existing systems to provide the new services,” explained Mr Glodas. “The employees do the work manually, which is stressful and requires working long hours. In the end, important resources are used up and precious time is wasted, but e-services still roll out late.”

The need for an innovative solution

Recently developed by NRD Companies, the innovative and customer-centric e-service platform GxP [7] addresses these issues. According to Mr Glodas, one of the most important features of the platform is the option to act both as a standalone platform for the institution and as an integral part of an inter-institutional system.

“With the GxP platform, there is no need to contact another institution to get additional information—the majority of data is available instantly,” he said. “The citizens will no longer need to submit documents to each institution as they will collect all the necessary data themselves. This gives flexibility, speed, and security when choosing and receiving e-services.”

GxP is also low-code, meaning that it is not required to have programming skills to operate it. The simplified system management enables employees to launch new e-services themselves, while the existing ones can be easily adapted to match the current needs. Mr Glodas said that this allows for a fast response to changes in both the market and legislation.

”Smoother cooperation between institutions would help not only to optimize and manage the processes more efficiently but also to provide the citizens with e-services that match their expectations. We believe the citizens should not carry the bureaucratic burden and GxP can help with that.”

Mr Glodas concluded that all e-services should serve the citizens in the most convenient way, while the systems must be able to collect the required data themselves.

”The new possibilities that GxP brings to the table will help to modernize the internal processes of institutions and streamline the e-services,” he said. “We hope that in the long run this will positively contribute to the economy, optimization of the institutions, and help with the purposeful allocation of state resources. Let the citizens contribute to the economy and in return get modern services from the government.”