Solution Example: Providing Users with a Self-Serve Portal
Challenges for Government Organizations
Government organizations typically receive a high volume of service requests from citizens. Citizens rely on the government for essential services, such as license plate renewals and passport applications. They also depend on the government for access to sensitive information, such as their health care records and income tax information.
Dealing with service requests using traditional channels (in-person, mail, or phone) can be slow and inefficient. Government employees are often forced to process paperwork and input information manually, increasing the time spent per request and limiting the number of requests that can be fulfilled in a day.
Using traditional service channels can be difficult for citizens too. Citizens typically have to visit or call multiple government offices to access all of the services they need. This can be confusing and frustrating as citizens navigate different government departments.
Government organizations want to improve the customer service experience for both citizens and government employees. This can include goals such as:
- Making services easier to access.
- Improving service response times.
- Reducing the strain on government employees that currently deal with long lines for in-person services or large volumes of phone calls.
Solutions for Government Organizations
How can you improve the customer service experience? Give citizens easy access to government services via an online portal. This allows citizens to access services at their convenience using a self-serve model.
To get started, citizens simply create a free account on the portal with basic information such as their name, email address, and password. They can then use the portal to access publicly available information and services, such as passport applications or vaccination clinic schedules.
If citizens want to view personal information via the portal, such as their health records, they must first verify their identity. This verification process is done through the portal and ensures the citizen is who they claim to be.
Providing government services via an online portal benefits both citizens and government employees:
- Citizens want quick and easy access to services. For many people, accessing services online is more convenient than using in-person services. Visiting a government office involves scheduling an appointment, potentially taking time off work, travel time, and wait times. These issues are eliminated by providing services online.
- Providing citizens with a single online location to visit for services eliminates the need for the citizen to contact or visit multiple government agencies.
- Using a self-serve platform enables citizens to do more for themselves, reducing the number of in-person and phone interactions with government employees.
The IDENTOS Solution
Government organizations can create a consistent digital experience for citizens using the IDENTOS product suite.
IDENTOS provides an end-to-end solution to deliver a secure online portal to citizens. This flexible solution combines the IDENTOS key capabilities:
Identity Verification
Confirming that someone is who they claim to be.
Identity Management
Confirming that someone is allowed to sign-in to a website or mobile app. Creating and managing an online account for the user.
Consent Management
Obtaining an individual’s consent before sharing their personal information.
Access Management
Determining the digital information and resources that someone is allowed to access.
A custom IDENTOS solution can be designed to include all of these capabilities or just the capabilities that you need. The solution can also be integrated with your existing systems.
One Approach to Creating a Self-Serve Portal
In this example, the citizen’s experience using the portal includes three main steps:
- The citizen creates an account on the portal. This allows the citizen to access general information via the portal.
- The citizen verifies their identity by providing one or more identifying documents, such as a driver’s license.
- Once verified, the citizen’s account can be linked to different government departments, allowing them to access more sensitive information such as health care information.
These steps are described in detail in the following sections.
1. Citizen Creates an Account
Identity Management (Authentication and Account Management)
Any citizen can create a free digital account on the portal.
To create a digital account, the citizen clicks a “Create Account” button on the portal home page and fills out a simple form with their name, email address, and a password.
They are also presented with information such as the portal’s terms of service, privacy policy, data collection policy, and a description of how this data will be shared. The citizen must agree to these terms and provide consent to share the information they entered when creating an account (name, email, and so on).
To finalize their account setup, the citizen receives an email with a one-time verification code they must enter on the portal. They must also choose a two-factor authentication (2FA) method for future logins, such as using an authenticator app or receiving a one-time verification code via email.
Once the citizen completes this step, their digital account is ready. The citizen can now use their digital account to access public information and services available on the portal, such as passport applications and general income tax information.
IDENTOS creates and manages the citizen’s digital account. The digital account is typically used to:
- Capture basic details provided by the citizen (name, preferred name, birthday, address, phone number, and so on).
- Capture the citizen’s agreement to legal documents, such as the terms and conditions of using online services. This agreement is recaptured periodically (such as annually).
- Manage user sessions and expire a session if the citizen is inactive for a specified period of time.
- Provide citizens with a single sign-on (SSO) to access services. When a citizen signs into one government service, they are automatically signed into other connected services. This reduces the number of times citizens have to sign in to access services.
2. Citizen Verifies their Identity
The citizen can choose to verify their identity in order to access more sensitive information via the portal, such as health care records and income tax returns.
Identity verification can be done at different levels of assurance (LoA). A citizen’s LoA determines which online services and resources they are able to access. Citizens begin with a basic verification level and can apply to increase their verification level in order to access more sensitive information.
The portal guides the citizen through the identity verification process. This includes:
- Explaining what a verified identity is.
- Listing the information and identifying documents the citizen needs for the verification process. Examples of identifying documents include a driver’s license, birth certificate, or passport.
- Prompting the citizen to enter information for each identifying document. This typically includes entering details such as the document number and expiry date and taking pictures of both the front and back of the document. IDENTOS verifies that the provided information for each document is valid before continuing the verification process.
- Recording a short selfie video as a liveness check.
Once the citizen has completed these steps, their identity verification application is submitted to the portal’s “Identity Verification Review” area. This area can only be accessed by authorized admin users (called “reviewers”) who are able to view and manage pending applications.
IDENTOS can also be integrated with multiple sources of truth, such as government databases, in order to verify the identifying documents provided by citizens.
The portal guides the reviewer through the process of checking an application to ensure the information and photos appear genuine. The reviewer can then approve or reject the application, or flag it for additional review.
Once the application is approved, the citizen has a verified identity on the portal. The citizen can now register to connected services on the portal. For example, the citizen may be able to access a provincial health website by registering their health card on the portal.
3. Citizen Accesses Secure Services (Program Linking)
Access Management, Consent Management
Once a citizen’s identity has been verified, the citizen’s digital account can be linked to different government data sources.
A single sign-on (SSO) environment allows the citizen to access multiple digital services (e.g. health care, property ownership) using the same account. This simplifies the citizen’s interactions with government organizations and eliminates the need for the citizen to be independently verified and onboarded by each department.
Citizens are asked for their consent to share their digital profile with each government department. For example, the citizen would need to provide consent to share their health card information in order to access health care services.
Conclusion: Online Portals Streamline Service Delivery
Using a secure online portal to deliver services helps government organizations improve their efficiency and increase citizen satisfaction.
For an online portal to be truly successful, it must be tailored to meet the needs of both the government organization and its citizens. IDENTOS allows you to create a custom digital experience that addresses the challenges faced by your organization and provides citizens with quick and easy access to the services they need.
IDENTOS Professional Services
Need help with implementation? IDENTOS offers custom design of your digital platform as well as hosting services.
Digital Platform Design
The portal can be provided to citizens on multiple digital platforms, such as websites, portals, and mobile apps.
Each platform is customized for the government organization. This includes:
- Custom branding to match the organization’s approved look-and-feel.
- Custom site and page design to conform to the organization’s standards.
- Localization in all required languages.
- Implementation of accessibility standards.
- Optimizing and monitoring site performance.
- Using a responsive design to ensure the site works well on desktop and mobile devices.
Managed Services
IDENTOS offers services to manage and host the entire digital platform.
24 x 7 Operations
- Redundant cloud-based infrastructure
- Hosting health and government applications and assets
- Live 24x7 emergency support
- 24x7 monitoring and alerting
ITIL Change & Incident Management
- Application support team
- Internal and integrated change management
- Incident and escalation management
Service Management
- Weekly and monthly customer meetings
- Availability and service metrics
- SLA monitoring and reporting
- Self-service ticketing
Compliance
- ISO 27001 compliance
- SOC2 Type 1
- Security and event monitoring
- Vulnerability and patch management
- Security/privacy incident management