If trials succeed, everyone will be given a personal web page where they can find information about their tax or benefits. Initial trials for the pages were started earlier this year by the Ministry for Administrative Renewal.
Information about child benefits, permits and other government information could also be included on the pages. Citizens will be able to see what personal information is available to government agencies, and to fill in forms online, such as tax forms. A personal archive of tax returns and benefits applications can also be electronically stored.
The ministry stressed that the personal Internet page should become a “transaction portal” where citizens can arrange all sorts of matters. All government services should be available.
I’ve seen the concept work well on a small scale. I have no idea of the Netherlands government’s track record for computer security. This could turn out to be a real disaster.
Only the US government could truly screw this up; the Dutch value their citizens and will probably do a good job of keeping things secure. A bigger potential problem is phishing, where a scammer gets someone’s user/pass and uses it to legitimately login to their personal page.
Great idea. Streamline the red tape. Unfortunately the if US tried we would contract incompetents with political ties and wind up exposing everyone’s personal information.
In contrast with the non-Dutch commentators I have experienced the way our government has taken up ICT to lessen bureaucracy. And I have never been impressed. Once every three months I have to reboot my linux server into Windows 2000, because it is the only system that doesn’t have trouble in communating with our IRS about my VAT balance.
In any European benchmark study on e-government the Dutch don’t score particularly high either.
Our parliament ordered all government bodies to take up open standards for communication with citizens, and among themselves, in 2002. Since then, nothing has happened.
The personal website is an old idea, at the time called ‘the digital locker’. The main problem about it is privacy, and that problem hasn’t been discussed.
Who is going to offer information to that personal website? And who may use it to streamline communications? And are those users able to see everything there is to see?
Apart from that, our government our using several systems to recognize us. There’s the social securiy and tax number, that’s going to get upgraded to a ‘Citizen service number”. But just last year a Digital ID was introduced, that has no relation to either.
Can I have clover on my page?