Anyone who has tried to complete Belgian administration online will be familiar with the patchwork of national and regional websites that complicate tasks as users are required to navigate through the maze.
In recognition of the practical barriers this creates, Brussels Minister for Digital Transition Bernard Clerfayt (DéFI) has set his sights on streamlining the muddle of websites. His ambition is to transform the regional websites, historically focused on the institutions, into websites geared towards citizens.
The new centralised site – be.brussels – reduces the number of regional websites from over 200 to 13 portals. It contains all the information dedicated to the Brussels Region.
"We can't put the citizens through the institutional lasagne of our region. It's not right that when you're looking for public service information online, you're faced with a digital jungle," Clerfayt explained.
Public service or public headache?
The initiative is clearly citizen-orientated, though public services and local authorities also struggle with the confusion of links and dedicated websites on a daily basis. But the problem has got out of hand: there are today far more websites than there are administrations. Brussels Environment, for example, has 23 different websites.
"We have to move away from an administrative approach to a user approach... We had to completely rethink our regional web landscape, putting the interests of the people of Brussels first."
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To this end, a major project taking over a year to complete has regrouped the 200 websites into 13 thematic portals. These deal with four principal themes: transport and mobility, employment, housing and "about the region".
"Users will no longer have to scour several sites to get an answer to their questions. Here, we put the user at the heart of our concerns and not the interests of the administrations. This digital vision will make Brussels more efficient and more modern."
