Gentofte in new pioneering electronic project*

People in Gentofte will soon be able to enrol their children in the local government’s day-care centres online, without needing to be on a waiting list first. A number of applications work together to make the solution fully electronic, spelling the end of the local government’s traditional place allocation system. Gentofte local government’s Finance Director describes it as a democratisation project, and KMD has coordinated inputs from the various actors in the project.

When Gentofte local government was awarded the European Digitisation Prize for “E-solutions targeted at citizens” at the end of last year, it was certainly no quick solution. The foundation stone was laid back in 1995 with a decision to bring together the work on enquiries from the public, both physically and in organisational terms. Once there was a well-oiled unit in place, Gentofte embraced the next challenge.

“We agreed it would be good to make all our services digital in such a way that local people would use them too,” remembers Jens Peter Friis, Finance Director for Gentofte local government.  

100% electronic
Today “Genvej” (literally “short cut”) is the framework for the electronic citizen-oriented system, which was supplemented at the start of 2010 with a service that enables the parents of small children to book a day-care place by fully electronic means, without the involvement of any municipal employees – known as “no touch”. The solution replaces the administration-heavy place allocation system, which basically involves parents putting their children’s names on a waiting list when they are born and being allocated a place about a year later.

“We are dispelling the myth that if you want a place at a specific day-care centre, you have to ring and ring the place allocation office until you get it. Parents can now see exactly what we see, which is a map of the local government showing the day-care centres, with red and green markers indicating availability. You simply enrol your child and, if your first choice doesn’t have any places, you can explore your options, for example by adjusting the start date,” says Jens Peter Friis, before going on to explain in more detail:

“After all, there are such varying factors that determine the parents’ first choice, for example location, whether it is a nature kindergarten or whether an older sibling already goes there. The point is that the parents know their needs in a broad sense and so they can use the simulations in the solution to explore their requirements in depth. For example, if the first-choice facility is full on the desired date, the answer may be to organise private childcare for three months until a place is available. This is an important democratisation element of the project.”

The business model is just as simple as the system, as it halves the staffing level of the current place allocation system. And the traditional barriers to electronic self-service certainly do not scare Gentofte, which provides ongoing training in using the Internet, issues 100 USB keys with digital signatures every week, and “turns around the monitor in the citizen service centre and provides help when help is needed,” as Jens Peter Friis puts it.

Interplay of several actors
The solution brings together providers and technologies, including the citizen-oriented application and a series of online web services, which communicate people’s data and the available places to and from the underlying specialist system, the KMD Institution. KMD has managed the project in accordance with the principles of Prince2, and Finance Director Jens Peter Friis describes it as “a real success story, with three parties taking an innovative approach to the concept”.

At the start of 2010, however, Jens Peter Friis came up against an obstacle which means he cannot say exactly when local people will have access to the solution. The electronic solution is ready, but the number of people moving into the local government means that the demand for day-care places is now higher than expected. After all, it is still the number of physical places that counts. They are expected to be ready during the first half of 2010, and local people will then be able to enrol their children online.

* This case is not covered by the independent auditor's report.