Under the Online Access Act, all federal and state public administrations are required to make their services available online by the end of 2022. To ensure that citizens can access the online services of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia with just a few clicks in future, these services are being consolidated into a central portal: On 30 April 2021, the North Rhine-Westphalia State Agency for Information and Technology (IT.NRW) launched the first phase of the Serviceportal.NRW. By 2022, this will become the central hub for accessing state administrative portals in North Rhine-Westphalia. The early launch of the platform allows user feedback to be gathered, which will be taken into account as the platform is further developed.

Users are guided to the relevant authority in the simplest possible way: via topic tiles and an integrated administrative search engine, the cross-agency service portal enables users to select the correct services and the relevant authorities for submitting their applications. For each service listed, information on eligibility criteria, costs, deadlines and required documents is displayed; once a postcode has been entered, the relevant authority and the application form are also shown. Applications relating to naturalisation and citizenship, for example, have already been implemented. Over the coming months, more and more digital services will be gradually linked to Serviceportal.NRW.

NRW Service Account: log in once – use all portals

In combination with the linked Service Account, the various online services can be used quickly and conveniently. Anyone who registers once with their personal details at www.servicekonto.nrw can then access all online services simply via the eID function on their identity card or using their email address and personal password. Personal data is retrieved directly from the Service Account and does not need to be entered again. Mandatory authentication via the personal Service Account minimises effort and errors and enables a fully digital application process.

Materna has implemented form management

An essential component of Serviceportal.NRW is its intelligent forms, which feature a plausibility check and unambiguous identification of the applicant via the service account. In the technical implementation of Serviceportal.NRW, Materna was therefore involved as the main contractor in the project to integrate the form management system (FMS). Working closely with T-Systems Multimedia Solutions, which provided the service portal, we advised on form management and, together with our partner Lucom, seamlessly integrated an FMS solution into the portal. To this end, we implemented, amongst other things, interfaces to connect the Lucom Interaction Platform (LIP) to the portal and adapted the forms in accordance with the content and technical standards of the Federal Information Management (FIM) system. The FIM ensures that, with the aid of standardised data structures, the necessary data is collected uniformly by all relevant authorities.

Now that the important milestone of going live has been achieved within the project year, Materna will continue to support the Serviceportal.NRW in its next phases of development and implement further application forms. Since December 2020, a framework agreement has also been in place with d-NRW, through which all authorised authorities can access Materna’s FMS services.

You can find out more about form management on our website.