LIVE SERVICES FOR CITIZENS WITH LIVE TECHNOLOGIES

e-Payment in Romania as First Step to an Effective e-Government

Veronica Stefan

Faculty of Economic Sciences, Valahia University, 35 Locotenent Stancu Ion Street, Targoviste, Romania

Antoniu Stefan

Programmer, Advanced Technology Systems, 222 Calea Domneasca Street, Targoviste, Romania

Keywords: e-Payment, Virtual payment office, Interoperability, Live services, Web based.

Abstract: The European Commission’s i2010 strategy aims to build on the increasing convergence of the Internet,

telecommunications and broadcasting to reap the benefits of Europe’s strength in ICT research and

development. One of its priorities is to provide all of Europe’s citizens with access to the information

Society, a society that delivers better public services and quality of life. The development of the Web has

created opportunities to improve efficiency and meet users' expectations. Interactive web technologies have

enhanced online collaboration and sharing among users. These innovations have resulted in a shift towards a

more dynamic and interactive web experience and the increasing provision of online service delivery

channels. This paper will explore how the public sector can use the Internet and intranet more effectively,

optimizing usability and increasing public engagement and loyalty and also focuses on emerging business

and technology developments, investigating how the Web will drive business in the future and how this will

impact on the citizen’s life and for the internationalization processes in the world economy.

1 INTRODUCTION

E-government is the term that describes the use of

information and communication technology in

public administrations. Combined with

organizational change and new skills, e-Government

has the potential to significantly improve public

services and democratic processes (Stefan, 38-40

2006). E-government promises to deliver better,

more efficient public services and improve the

relationship between citizens and their governments.

A targeted R&D effort is the key to achieving these

goals.

Web technologies will also explore the internal

systems which support the way we work.

Organizations have spent millions of pounds on

managing and organizing information, and with

tools such as portals and intranets, employees are

better able to find the information they need, when

they need it. Public sector websites need to become

more transactional, giving the public more channels

to work with government.

The Web applications are working to deliver

more efficient and effective communications

between the Council and the citizens and businesses.

More platforms provides citizens with their own

secure electronic account to access view and

interrogate complete Council Tax and Business

Rates statements and balances online. This

presentation will explore how they have introduced

information systems that improve services and

customer satisfaction in public services. In the same

time, public sector IT managers need to be able to

tackle inclusion issues, and provide a website that is

available for all user groups. Our paper considers the

challenges faced by the public sector and discusses

how to make e-Services more accessible and useful

to citizens.

One of the key objectives in modernizing public

services is to make state interventions and the

actions of public authorities as efficient as possible,

while improving the quality of public services

provided to users. New technologies play a vital role

in meeting this challenge.

One of the objectives is to observe the reasons

determining the organizations to apply those new

503

Stefan V. and Stefan A. (2008).

LIVE SERVICES FOR CITIZENS WITH LIVE TECHNOLOGIES - e-Payment in Romania as First Step to an Effective e-Government.

In Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies, pages 503-506

DOI: 10.5220/0001529905030506

 SciTePress

technologies, if they do that and how have changed

the performance level.

In an economy in transition, a solution regarding

those imperatives can be the application of many

instruments, such as an efficient information

technology and communications (ITC) strategy,

proposed by a good policy of IT Governance (ITG).

The authors present many kind of obstacles with

implementing this policy and discusses different

cases about how the ITC can sustain and assure the

achievement of general aims and provide

information to management decision making. To

reach these objectives, we will analyze some type of

specific software application in the fields and also

the specific Romanian market.

Is there some specificity for the Romanian

organizations or are they generally valid problems?

What conditions must be made for realize this

objectives? There are the themes of interest, whose

presentation will be made.

2 NEW WAYS OF RELATING

WITH CITIZENS

In conformity with (egovmonitor), it indicates three

possible relationships between local authorities and

their citizens:

 An informational/transactional relationship;

 An insightful relationship: council-driven;

Recent research reveals that no councils are engaged

in this kind of relationship with their citizens yet.

 An insightful relationship: citizen-driven;

This could, for example, be via web-based

community portals linked to Geographical

Information Systems, which enable citizens to find

out more about local services (and their

performance) and to challenge service providers to

improve performance, through greater citizen

involvement in service design and delivery. Early

examples of community portals are appearing in

some local authorities, exploring what it means to be

held ‘accountable’ to its citizens

Administration must adapt to the IT&C solutions

for managing infrastructure and relationships with

citizens/ users. Combined with organizational

change and new skills, e-Government need to

become more transactional, giving the public more

channels to work with government in a ‘live’ way

using live technology Web based (Online

Availability of Public Services), (Des citoyens

partenaires , 2002).

3 ELECTRONIC PAYMENT

3.1 Law Conditions

The project started because of Law 89 from 1998

stipulating Public Administration’s activities

decentralization, imposed passage for collecting fees

and taxes from Finance Ministry to Local Public

Administration (mcti.ro).

We will present in this paper the e-Payment

module of an integrated system for public

administration, ATLAS (ats.com). For its facilities

and adaptability, ATLAS was recognized as being

innovative in its domain, things proved through its

implementations since launching date.

The application had to follow step-by-step the

law and its many changes. As Romanian market

imposed ATLAS development, it was the same

which agreed that launching it for exploitation was a

premiere on ITC market. In such a short time and

having to face lots of law changes, ATLAS has

succeeded to answer Government’s demands for

society’s informational development using the latest

ITC discoveries. Law 291 from 2002 stipulating

local taxes and fees electronic payment, a MCTI

project, led to Romania’s cities compulsories on

deployment of electronic systems for local tax

collection. The project’s specific objectives

contributed to European Community’s strategies

bringing their benefits in development for ITC

society.

Figure 1: Electronic payment module.

An important characteristic of ATLAS

application is that it can be provided in ASP

(application service provider). Thus, the application

would be installed, for example in a County Council.

There will be needed a database server that could

administrate all small towns.

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3.2 Architecture and Technology

The application architecture was developed based on

TCP/IP also taking into account the publication of

data on the WEB.

ATLAS is an integrated system and web based

solution for Public Administration to facilitate real

time management and to sustain the interaction

between Citizens, Enterprises and Government.

 E-Payment

 Vocal System

 Urban planning

 Financial Accounting

 Document-Management

The application is built on Client/Server

architecture because it offers large capacity of work

and storage as well as fast reply time. Another

reason for which we have chosen the Client/Server

architecture is the offered data security mechanism.

The applications 3-Tier architecture:

For electronic payment connectivity with Banc

Post, we used a server based on SOAP (Simple

Object Access Protocol) standard as well as XML

standard for data transfer.

ATLAS can use as database, any database that

respects the ANSI SQL 92 standards. The Web

portal of the application was written using PHP 4.3

using the APACHE 2.0 web server to allow

installation on both Windows and Linux platforms.

As regards to scalability, we took into

consideration the large number of users that can

connect to the SQL Server using ATLAS

application. Taking into account the limited budget

of the Town Hall, we chose a database server that

allowed scalability and interconnectivity. At present,

there are almost 370 internal users, the rest of the

users being external ones (tax payers) connecting

through the Internet. When purchasing the system,

the Town Hall took into account a large number of

users, but presently it is not used on its full capacity.

We also use a distributed computing server that

handles processing in case the client has a modest

hardware configuration and cannot do the processing

on his own. This server can utilize the unused

processing power of other computers from local

network. In this case too, the computations are done

based on the formulas in the database, keeping the

application adaptability.

ATLAS is an open application, capable of

exchanging data with other applications or to use

them in common. Furthermore, ATLAS offers

statistical data on-line about the transactions carried

out by users to the departments of concerned

ministries.

Figure 2: Architecture overview.

Data protection is assured by means of:

 Database level security systems.

 3-Tier architecture that makes users connects to

an intermediary application server and not directly to

the database.

 Secured communication protocols (ex: SSL).

 Asymmetrical key encryption algorithms (the

communication between banks and the Town Hall).

VPN over the Internet for payments made through

On-line Post.

 Backup database servers.

 Local network firewall.

3.3 Local Taxes On-Line Payments

through Post Offices

For payments on-line through the Postal Offices the

solution supposed installing the ATLAS application

in every Postal Office in Bucharest and connecting

them to the database server. This way, all the 67

Postal Offices from Bucharest are connected on-line

at the Sector 2 town hall, making possible the

consulting and collecting of taxes and fees for the

taxpayers registered in this database, without having

to go to the town hall anymore.

For payments made through Bucharest’s 67 Post

Offices, the data transfer security is done using a

VPN created over the Internet. For data transfer with

Banc Post (one of the banks allowing electronic

payments), the data is encrypted using asymmetric

keys. The data exchanged between the two servers

(Town Hall’s and banks) is made by means of a

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) server that

encrypts and decrypts the requests and the replies

using the asymmetric key structure above

mentioned. The access is unlimited, being a

customizable application.

LIVE SERVICES FOR CITIZENS WITH LIVE TECHNOLOGIES - e-Payment in Romania as First Step to an Effective

e-Government

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The application allows different access,

depending on the operation level. There are access

levels for different parts of the application and the

rights can be assigned on groups as well as on

functions.

Bucharest’s 67 Post Offices (each having 2-4

work stations) are on-line connected to Sector 2

Budget Incomes Direction, thus making possible

taxes and fees consulting and payment for these

database taxpayers.

This solution has proved to have a greater impact

than Internet payment because it is addressing to a

bigger population segment which doesn’t have an

Internet connection.

4 VOCAL SYSTEMS

The application also offers a vocal taxes and fees

consulting system through the telephone. It allows

the informing by telephone of taxpayers about the

amount of taxes and fees, payment possibilities,

remaining sums to be paid, programming of

hearings, exchange of vocal messages between

citizens and the Local Public Administration, etc.

Figure 3: Vocal system.

This system is the first of its kind in Romania, and it

can be tested by calling from any telephone with

DTMF capabilities (Stefan, 2007), (Stefan, 2006).

5 CONCLUSIONS

Whereas the European integration of Romania in

2007, one of the main objectives of our Government

has been to provide an adequate legislative

framework in order to sustain the reform process

within central and local public administrations, but

although the information technologies develop very

fast and they offer a wide range of complex

applications.

Research has indicated that there are significant

difficulties in implementing e-Government projects

in the public sector. As in the private sector, the real

benefits of such projects can only be gained if the

introduction of technology is combined with

organizational change and a sufficient focus on new

skills that may be needed.

Building of eServices will take a long time. The

main challenge is to have a common framework, as

it begins to be established at European level, to

guarantee interoperability, critical mass and

economies of scale. This process must be widely

promoted and supported by all levels of

administrations and the private sector.

Open and transparent local and regional

government is a prerequisite of local democracy.

The technology offers an exciting opportunity for

the citizens to control and have ownership of the

personal information managed by administrations

and to receive personalized services. In this regard,

security and privacy are important quality indicators

of public service delivery and must be taken into

account in e-Government planning.

REFERENCES

Stefan, V., 2006. Tehnologii de interoperabilitate pe Web

pentru servicii online, Revista Tribuna Economică 38-

40, Bucureşti, ISSN 1018-0451

Stefan, V., 2007. Les systèmes informatique d’interface et

l’espace collaboratif dans l’UE. International

Conference “ Integration economique, concurrence et

cooperation”. Rijeka, Croatie

Stefan, V., 2006., Le role des TIC pour un mondialisation

juste et pour la participations des citoyens aux

mecanismes publics. XVIIème Colloque Fédérateur de

l’Institut CEDIMES. l’Université Valahia du

Târgovişte, Romania

http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/1055, Citizen

Relationship Management: The Rocky Road from

Transactions

Online Availability of Public Services: How is Europe

progressing? Web based survey on electronic public

services, October 2004, Prepared by Capgemini for

European Commission

Des citoyens partenaires - Information, consultation et

participation à la formulation des politiques publiques,

Éditions OCDE 2002

http://www.ats.com.ro/products

http://www.mcti.ro /index.php?id=45&L=0

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