Collaboration with BearingPoint Caribbean results in milestone achievement for digital advancement.
MijnCN (or MyCN in English) is the newly launched online platform for public services for the Caribbean Netherlands. From now on, residents and businesses can manage several online services in an easy, quick, and safe manner in the one-stop portal. The portal was developed by BearingPoint Caribbean and integrates online services of different governmental organizations into one portal.
The Belastingdienst Caribbean Netherlands (BCN) is the first government organization to offer its services on the MijnCN platform. Residents and businesses can access the platform to file their annual income tax returns or General Expenditure Tax (ABB) and Wage Tax (LH) returns. The organization for Social Affairs and Employment (SZW) also recently launched its services on the portal, enabling employers to report employee absences online for their wage loss application. Both applications were also built by BearingPoint Caribbean.
In creating MijnCN, a development team of BearingPoint Caribbean worked in close collaboration with several client stakeholders, such as the UX department of the Dutch Tax Administration and the executive level of BCN and SZW. The team had to navigate through the different requirements and wishes of the clients. For example, SZW strongly favors an “online first” approach when it comes to the delivery of its services. Meaning that all services and interactions must be accessed, requested, and handled through online services, unless there is a legitimate reason as to why this is not feasible. The end goal was to create a seamless experience for citizens and businesses (as well as their representatives) while also making the platform future-proof for more central and local government services to become available.
Citizens and businesses access the MijnCN portal with one unique set of credentials using a login name and password. Two-factor authorization is also available through the MijnCN app that is available in the Google Play store and Apple app store. One seamless interface is built from the multiple techniques using REACT, which keeps the end user’s experience similar to using a single system. Through the homepage of the portal, users can then click on the desired online service they wish to access. SAML, or the Security Assertion Markup Language, ensures the authentication and authorization of the user’s identity and credentials and centralizes user management. Multiple back-end applications work seamlessly through the portal of MijnCN. Data harmonization takes place, which combines data from different sources in such a way that they fit together and provides users a unified view of data. The synchronization process validates that the available data is always correct and up to date.
The newly launched portal was specifically developed for the Caribbean Netherlands but follows the same strategic and conceptual principles of our Public Services Suite whereas a central platform offers seamless interactions between different government organizations and citizens and businesses. A comprehensive 360° single unified view of citizens and businesses is created through its integrated suite of software modules. One-time registration and immediate validation of data are only a few of the benefits that are obtained. Governments achieve a substantial gain in efficiency by integrating their application through the suite. Developed specifically to manage some of the core government processes, our suite is designed to provide excellent service to the public at a lower cost of operations, but most importantly, the Public Services Suite ensures a higher level of compliance. In a similar way, MijnCN offers substantial benefits to citizens, businesses, and government organizations.
Ben de Kruijf is the BearingPoint Caribbean account manager of the MijnCN platform and the BCN and SZW systems. He offers his insights into the challenges of the portal: “I believe that one of the biggest challenges of such a platform is to think of a way for developing the portal so that it becomes simple enough for everyone to use. How can we develop the portal so that people become self-reliant? A person with little to no computer or website knowledge should be able to navigate through the system with as much ease as possible, preferably without any helpdesk assistance. Also, for such a government-wide portal to succeed you need cross-collaboration and commitment of all parties involved. You need a different mindset. This was the case for the Caribbean Netherlands. In fact, in the near future, more central and local government services will become available on the MijnCN portal.”
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