The partner organizations of the Competence project introduce modern integrated information platforms for their clients.

The “COMPETENCE – Capacity building Of eMployees of municiPalitiEs for beTtEr provisioN of publiC sErvices” project supported by the EEA and Norway Grants Fund for Regional Cooperation was conducted between July 1, 2021 and December 31, 2023. The goal of the international project was to improve the quality of public services provided by local governments, to which it contributed by developing two areas. On the one hand, the program aimed to achieve this by developing the communication, intercultural and problem-solving skills of the employees, therefore the local government specialists developed educational materials that can be used for further training. You can read more about the project activity on this page, the training materials are shared in downloadable form at the end of the article: https://competenceproject.eu/?p=833

On the other hand, the modern citizen information platforms that are introduced as a result of the project help raise the standard of public services, which collect answers to the most frequently asked questions of clients about municipal services.

Informing clients cannot consist only of the publication of specific services and their brief summaries on the official website of the place providing the service. In doing so, the institution fulfils its statutory obligation to provide information, while the detailed questions of interest to clients are often not included on the webpage. Furthermore, the information shared on the official websites may contain jargon, the knowledge of which is not expected from the clients.

Meanwhile, many people do not know what municipal services they could use in their given life situation. Searching for information is particularly difficult and time-consuming if you have to gather the necessary data about services and terms of use on several channels. For example, it is in vain to find out from the website that the local social institution has the possibility to provide home assistance, if information about the necessary conditions of the service and the documents to be submitted can only be obtained by e-mail or by phone during customer service hours. Complete information can save working time on the service provider’s side, and sufficient information can save free time on the client’s side.

Therefore, local governments can highly benefit from the introduction of a modern online information platform that helps clients find out about municipal services. In the first step, it is worth developing to support social services, but definitely to the human services (e.g. education, healthcare, social services, child welfare, etc.). Local government employees who work every day on the provision of human services, and thus also interact with clients daily, learn communication methods suitable for clients during development. When preparing the texts to be posted on the platform, they are able to formulate the answers to the most frequently asked questions by clients in a way that can be well understood while maintaining credibility.

The platform to be introduced by the Újbuda Municipality is available to clients at https://info.ujbuda.hu. The URL of the platform can be adapted to the existing or newly acquired domain name of any local municipality.

Interested local governments can find out about the conditions for using the platform through the following contacts of the project’s Norwegian expert partner organization (Åpenhet AS):

 – Thibault Rabussier, thibault.rabussier@apenhet.com

 – Yasser Lahbibi, yasser.lahbibi@apenhet.com

The communication manual of the platform, which can be downloaded from the link below, helps with the design of the online interface:

https://competenceproject.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/4-Communication-Manual.pdf