The Dutch government offers its citizens a secure mailbox service, called the Berichtenbox through which citizens can receive formal correspondence from government agencies in digital form.
It can be seen as the digital version of the traditional letterbox. The Berichtenbox is part of MijnOverheid, a portal that enables citizens to view and receive personal data from the Dutch government on various subjects.
The app shows that the use of mobile devices provides an effective channel for governments to communicate with citizens. Various governmental agencies can avoid building their own apps for similar processes and instead focus on collaboration and synergy between agencies. The Berichtenbox app is the result of such collaboration and synergy between agencies.
In addition, the app shows that there is a strong demand for a mobile option by which formal correspondence from government agencies can be received and opened.
To read mail in the Berichtenbox, you must log in to the MijnOverheid portal using DigiD (an authentication service provided by the Dutch government). This is perceived by some users as a roundabout method, which increases the chance that important correspondence will be missed, possibly resulting in fines.
The Berichtenbox on MijnOverheid uses e-mail notifications to let the user know that new mail has been delivered. The e-mail notification service is optional for users. Users are also responsible for keeping the e-mail address up to date. The consequences of these user options are that important formal correspondence might be missed because the user opted not to be notified, or the registered e-mail address is no longer in use. To offer users a better experience and to minimise the possibility of missing e-mail, the government office Logius has incorporated the Berichtenbox functionality in a mobile app for Android and Apple. Making use of the standard notification functionality on mobile devices has reduced the chances of users missing formal correspondence.
The aim of mobile app was to:
- inform users faster about new formal correspondence in the Berichtenbox;
- increase accessibility to the Berichtenbox through a faster and easier login procedure than the portal;
- allow the opening and reading of the formal correspondence on mobile device;
- offer users multiple notification channels;
- offer a better user experience;
- enable users to easily forward messages to preferred channels.
Another improvement is the simplification of the login procedure. The login used by the app is linked only the first time via the DigiD. After this initial login, the app can be opened with a pin chosen by the user.