The Austrian Tax Administration is taking a new and innovative path by already engaging its citizens at the beginning and throughout the process of the development of its services. Hence, the platform ‘e3lab-einfach, elektronisch, effektiv’ (e3lab – simple, electronically, effective.) was founded. This platform follows the idea of open innovation and gives citizens the opportunity to engage in the design, development and improvement process within the tax administration. This is not restricted to the platform itself, but also follows a more holistic approach e.g. through workshops and training groups.
Via the platform, clients can hand in their ideas for the ‘challenges’ they see, and the proposed ideas and improvements are further discussed, scrutinised and rated by the community and experts of the Federal Ministry of Finance. With this forum, citizens have the opportunity to be actively involved in new developments and existing financial services. Through this channel of interaction, a new form of collaboration between experts and users of the services has been created. At the same time a customer-centred, 360-degree feedback option has been put in place through this open platform. All proposed ideas are directly influencing the development and the improvement of the services at the federal ministry.
The e3lab co-creation platform www.e3lab.at has been accessible for all citizens since 25 April 2017. As of April 2019, the platform had 983 members and about 305 ideas have been submitted to the system since the beginning of the challenges. Over 1120 comments have been made during this period. The implementation of the platform has been realised by a company called HYVE Innovation Community GmbH. The company has already had experience within administrational systems and the structure was quite similar to their former platforms. HYVE supported the project with community management, although this has been taken over by staff members of the Federal Ministry of Finance. Due to the standard procedure that has been put in place the platform was set up and launched within two months (including the corporate design and the set-up of the challenges).