City Services via the Unified Model of Electronic Administrative Services 

 

The Sofia Municipality has started a project for gradual accession of the regional administrations to the Unified Model for application, payment, and provision of electronic administrative services to the State Agency for e-Government (SEGA).

 

About the Unified Model

The Unified Model for Application, Payment and Provision of Electronic Administrative Services developed by the State e-Government Agency (SEGA) allows the citizens and the business centralized application, payment, and provision of electronic administrative services. SEGA continues to gradually develop the systems’ functionalities and the integration between the administrative units and their structures.

Currently, the services provided via the Unified Model are over 340. The registered users in the e-Portal are 22,099. Approximately 2.5 million Bulgarians have a Personal Identification Code of the National Social Security Institute, and а NSSI one – about 2 million citizens. Over 500,000 Bulgarians have a Qualified Electronic Signature. Thus, nearly 5 million citizens have access to the e-Portal for electronic administrative services.

By the end of 2020, the predominant part of the services provided by the Sofia Municipality and all regional administrations will also be available via the Unified Model.

 

What lies ahead?

Four pilot districts – Serdika, Triaditsa, Nadezhda and Bankya, will be the first to start offering over 70 electronic administrative services via the e-services portal https://e-gov.bg/wps/portal/.

The four pilot districts were selected based on the number of electronic services requested via the current system over the last year. The biggest number of requested electronic services has been in the Triaditsa, the least in Bankya, while Serdika and Nadezhda had an average number of requests. The experience of the first four pilot district administrations in joining the Unified Model will pinpoint problem areas to solve and build expertise that will be helpful to the remaining districts.

In the coming weeks, the team of Innovative Sofia will work with all 24 district administrations through regular communication and meetings to discuss the progress on digitalization of administrative services, the most common cases, local issues, clarifications on work processes, and more. This will ensure the smooth transition of all district administrations and equal preparedness of the individual districts.

For the implementation of the project, Sofia will receive expert technical assistance from FutureGov, a London-based firm that partners the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Digital Innovation Initiative. The programme aims at accelerating digital innovation to improve critical services and deliver better results for residents. Sofia is now part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’  Programme along with 20 other European cities. In addition to receiving expert technical assistance from FutureGov, Sofia will also have the chance to collaborate and share knowledge with other participating cities such as Dublin, Prague, Tallinn, Bratislava, Budapest and Helsinki.   

E-services for citizens and businesses aim to reduce the administrative burdens and improve quality of life in the city, providing services faster and easier at reduced costs.

 

Why the Unified Model?

The Unified Model’s main advantages are the possibility to pay for the services electronically directly and the possibility to use several types of electronic identification. In addition to a Qualified Electronic Signature, access to the system can be obtained through the NSSI runway and two cloud solutions for electronic identification (Eurotrust and B-thrust).

The certification of the time of sending and receiving documents and messages between the sender and the recipient, as well as the security and safety of the documentation are among the advantages of providing services through the SEGA system. The communication has probative value and guarantees the authenticity of the exchanged documents.

What citizens and businesses need to know to be able to use administrative e-services

To access the e-services portal, individuals and legal entities must register at https://edelivery.egov.bg/Account/Register.

Access to the Unified Model for e-Services happens through a Qualified Electronic Signature (including the mobile cloud solutions Evrotrust and B-thrust, which offer identification via a mobile device with links to both companies),  by a Personal Identification Code of the National Social Security Institute, and in the case of legal entities – by submitting an application signed with an electronic signature through a personal profile. The company profile then can be accessed by one or more persons to whom access has been granted. The System also supports personal messages.

 

We would like to remind you that currently, nearly 50 of the Sofia Municipality services are available without a counter service, through the existing system of Sofia Municipality at usl.sofia.bg, developed under a project of the Ministry of Transport in 2014. The system remains available along with the Unified Model.

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