Posts Tagged ‘administration’

Flashback: E-invoicing applications for your iPhone

January 12, 2011  |  Electronic Invoicing, Publications  |  3 Comments

The EEI Platform has listed several products for your mobile phone to make e-invoicing possible 24/7!

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Combining e-invoicing and eProcurement doubles chances for AP invoice processing excellence

July 19, 2010  |  Invoice Automation, Publications  |  No Comments

Best AP departments 50 times as productive as the least effective

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German Government wants open standards and open source

November 18, 2009  |  Adoption  |  No Comments

The newly elected German Government plans to support open standards and open source software.

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Proposals European Commission could reduce administrative burden

October 23, 2009  |  Adoption, Publications  |  No Comments

In 2007 the European Union set itself an ambitious target of cutting administrative costs imposed by EU legislation by 25% by 2012.

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EU: SEMIC.EU repository registers 100th interoperability asset

March 20, 2009  |  Uncategorized  |  No Comments


The Semantic Interoperability Centre Europe’s repository of interoperability assets has passed an important milestone. Two new core components were provided by the French Ministry of Budget’s General Directorate for State Modernisation (DGME), pushing the number of available solutions into the triple digits.

The 100th asset is a specification of “Financial Institution” in France. It is used as a standard to describe an institution, such as a bank, building society, credit union, stock brokerage, or similar business.

Other data models and solutions span domains as diverse as employment and energy, agriculture and public health.

SEMIC.EU cooperates with numerous European projects and experts. Among the providers are the European Commission itself, Eurostat, the eGovernment units of Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, regional agencies from Italy and Spain as well as international organisations like OASIS and the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative.

Examples of transnational interoperability assets:

Examples of national models include:

As a service, SEMIC.EU gives active support to eGovernment projects that intend to reuse existing semantic solutions tailored to their own needs.

The Semantic Interoperability Centre Europe is one of the “horizontal measures” of the European Commission’s programme “Interoperable Delivery of European eGovernment Services to public Administrations, Businesses and Citizens” (IDABC). Others include the European Interoperability Framework (EIF), the Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR.eu) and the European Union Public Licence (EUPL).
Source: www.epractice.eu

Promoting eServices in rural areas in Spain

November 5, 2008  |  Uncategorized  |  No Comments

The Spanish Minister for Industry, Tourism and Trade and the Minister for Public Administrations have launched a new training programme aimed at promoting the use of eGovernment services by the citizens of rural areas, so as to break the digital divide.

The initiative is intended to bring the citizens of rural areas closer to all three levels of Government in Spain by enabling them to benefit from the approximately 900 central, regional and local public services available on the eGovernment portal ‘060.es’.

Named ‘Telecentres training and revitalization plan’, the €2 million project relies on the network of Red.es Telecentres; those free Internet access points located across Spain’s rural areas. Over 500 Telecentres trainers will, within 1 500 Telecentres, instruct the population on how to perform operations via the eGovernment portal and to obtain information by electronic means.

In this light, printed and audiovisual information material have been designed in a clear language, with practical examples of the citizens’ daily life aspects, so as to demonstrate the advantages of the portal. In addition, distinct multimedia information packs are being conceived following the specific profiles (youngsters, women, seniors, immigrants, etc) structuring the portal. This material will include information on each target group’s most used services, as well as on the use of the national eID card.

Miguel Sebastián, Minister for Industry, Tourism and Trade stressed that following the successful deployment of Telecentres, his department will concentrate its efforts on the “valorisation of the infrastructure” by adding “services associated to the Telecentres”. He informed that the launch of the ‘Telecentres training and revitalisation plan’ is the first measure in this direction, and that it is based on the Training axis of the Avanza2 programme.

The plan has already started being implemented in 304 Telecentres in the regions of Andalusia and Asturias, with 150 dedicated trainers involved. Later on, the plan will focus on the regions of Castile and León, the Canary Islands and Murcia, and then on Galicia, the Valencian Community, Castile-La Mancha and Extremadura.

Source: Epractice.eu

FICORA introduces eInvoicing

October 17, 2008  |  Uncategorized  |  No Comments

Many of the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority’s (FICORA) fees, such as the television fee, frequency fee, maritime radio examination and certificate fee, can be eInvoiced as of this fall. At first, customers of other banks than Nordea cannot pay FICORA’s eInvoices. The service will be provided by Itella Information. Consumers can still have FICORA’s invoices on paper. The shift to eInvoicing is easy. When consumers next time pay their invoice online, they can notify that they wish to have their invoice sent to their online bank as an eInvoice.
 
“Consumers can now select whether they want their television fee invoice on paper or sent as an eInvoice to their online bank. We believe that many will opt for the electronic invoice, which is easy, although the paper version will also be available,” says FICORA Development Manager Aulikki Behm. That FICORA now carries e-invoices is part of the cooperation between Itella Information and the State Treasury, which encourages state authorities to introduce eInvoicing. In the spring of 2007, Itella Information Oy won the competitive bidding on the state invoice delivery. The objective of the State Treasury is to have all purchase invoices sent to state authorities online by the end of 2009, as well as a major part of the outgoing invoices.
 
FICORA has high invoicing volumes. Annually, 5.5 million television fee invoices are sent to consumers and companies, and about 55,000 radio frequency or other fees are invoiced.
 
“By transferring to eInvoicing, those sending high volumes of invoices set an example to other players. In Finland, the spread of eInvoicing among consumers has not proceeded as predicted. It is important that consumers can select where they want their invoices delivered. Consumers can review the image of the invoice on an electronic invoice produced by Itella Information. They also appreciate that they have the freedom to choose between different alternatives, can save the invoice in an electronic archive, and see the image of the invoice with all specifications,” says Director Jari Annala, who is responsible for the operations of Itella Information in Finland.
 
The Finnish Vehicle Administration with its 6.5 million automobile tax invoices and FICORA with its 5.5 million television fee invoices send the most invoices within the public administration. The Vehicle Administration will introduce eInvoicing next spring. Approximately 89 per cent of invoices sent by the public administration go to consumers. Nearly 70 per cent of invoices received by the public administration are already now electronic. Of these, nearly 30 per cent are online invoices and 40 per cent of those scanned by Itella.

www.ficora.fi
 
Source: www.itella.com

EC workshop eProcurement solutions in Vienna

September 27, 2008  |  Adoption, Events, Publications  |  No Comments

The IDABC programme (http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/) is supporting the design and development of eProcurement solutions compliant with the public procurement Directives 2004/17/EC and 2004/18/EC, by providing tools (mainly, the eProcurement demonstrators, the helpdesk service and the Functional Requirements) that can be used as examples and guidelines.  The eProcurement Forum, a community within the ePractice portal, is organizing in cooperation with Auftrag.AT a workshop to exchange experiences about the development of Public eProcurement solutions aligned with the European legislation. The workshop will take place on the 14th January 2009 at the Schönbrunn Palace Conference Centre in Wien (Austria).
  
The participants will have the opportunity to have an insight into the IDABC eProcurement demonstrators and to be presented with some eProcurement cases developed using the IDABC tools as sources of inspirations.  This workshop targets all the European eProcurement experts and in particular those belonging to:

  • Public Administrations that are setting up new eProcurement solutions and are interested in capitalising on other experiences and in receiving information on available guidelines and tools
  • IT companies in charge of the development of eProcurement solutions
  • Organisations responsible for existing eProcurement solutions that need to be aligned with the European legislation

A “Call for presentations” is open until the 5th December 2008. Please contact the eProcurement Forum by e-mail  (eprocurement@epractice.eu) if you need further information on the event, or if you are interested in sharing your experience and in presenting a case.

Registration is possible via the ePractice website at http://www.epractice.eu/workshop/37.  Please note that attendance is free and open to everyone who has been registered on the ePractice portal. Since the available places are limited, interested experts are invited to register soon. 

E-invoicing implementation hampered by regulatory compliance requirements in Europe – study

September 17, 2008  |  Uncategorized  |  No Comments

A survey presented at the Swift International Banking Operations Seminar (SIBOS) taking place in Vienna 15 – 19 September shows that European companies are held back from switching to electronic invoicing by complex regulatory compliance requirements and legislation.

The survey found that despite the multiple advantages electronic invoicing offers for business owners – cost-effectiveness and more efficient resource administration among them – 40 percent of European companies currently show no direct interest in performing the switch from paper-based to electronic invoices mainly because their initiatives are hampered by pre-existing regulatory compliance requirements to various country-specific e-invoicing systems. Moreover, over half of the European companies which have subsidiaries and operate their businesses in six or more countries worldwide admit concern regarding the implementation of an e-invoicing system, mainly due to problems arising from the need to comply with multiple national e-invoicing legislations across the globe. Also, a quarter of the survey participants admitted that VAT compliance and auditing requirements – which are an integral part of the invoicing process – are also a problem in the context of dealing with different financial legislations in various countries, each with its own requirements and compliance standards. Therefore, although the benefits of implementing an electronic invoicing system are evident to European business owners, the survey conducted by independent research company Vanson Bourne shows that in actuality, e-invoicing implementation is undermined by its dependency on country-specific compliance regulations and by national VAT and tax compliance requirements.

Source: Sterling Commerce

         

25-11-2008: ePractice.eu – Administrative burden

September 16, 2008  |  Events  |  No Comments

In its Action Programme for Reducing Administrative Burden, the European Commission proposes actions in order to reduce the cost stemming from EC and national regulations by 25% until 2012. The cost for businesses for filling forms and reporting according to obligatory regulations is estimated to add up to 3% of the GDP in the EU. Reducing unnecessary obligations could therefore save costs and increase productivity and competitiveness.The Commission is not only concerned with reducing unnecessary EU regulations, but also with accelerating the sharing between national simplification programmes which in many member states already exist. Necessary elements of such programmes are methods for measuring and reducing the administrative burden such as the Standard Cost Model (SCM) and principles, which includes procedural simplification and integrates different reporting processes into one single filing provision.

OBJECTIVES of the workshop

- Discuss and look at how eGovernment can be an effective tool in the reduction of administrative burden for public administration, business and citizens.
- Inform about the present activities of the European Commission by speakers from DG Enterprise and DG Infosoc including the latest call within the ICT PSP Work Programme 2008;
- Provide an up to date overview of the latest activities of the SCM Network;
- Present good practice cases from Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany, among others, showing how administrative burden is being reduced for business, citizens and government;
- Provide participants an opportunity to raise questions and discuss these good practice examples with the case presenters in three parallel working groups.

More information to be found on the website of ePractice.eu.