eGovernment brings massive cost savings

Most of the Swedish Banks are in the move towards making their customers become electronic citizens, by equipping their customers with a banking card that also contains an electronic identity. This enables the customers to access eGovernment functions, and making it more convenient for be an electronic citizen.

Banks need to equip their customers with a security solution, and each government agency alone don’t make a business case. Therefore the Banks in Sweden are reselling identity towards all agencies, and thereby achieving cost-savings, and together create a win-win situation. Maria Repitsch interviewed (In Swedish) Kay Kojer, business developer at the Swedish Tax Agency.

The Swedish tax agency have 7.4 million citizens that make tax return each year, and it’s estimated that 4.45 million (60%) out of these makes it electronically. Mr Kojer mentions that there are huge savings in making it electronically.

Today Swedish Tax Agency pays about 2€ for a simple tax return being scanned and processed, and up to 20€ for a multipage tax report. For the multipage tax reports, there is also a huge cost in the manual handling of errors, where the agency needs to contact the citizen to clarify mathematical corrections, which is time-consuming and costly.

“- Our goal for this year is to reach 60% in electronic tax return. In a few number of years, we expect this to reach 80%. We don’t think everyone will make electronic tax return, therefore we will always support the manual paper process. “

Birgitta Målsäter, director at the Social Insurance Agency, mention that their customer electronic customer contact is used by 70% of the citizen that uses the service, and the goal is to increase that even further, to increase cost-savings.

“-With an increased degree of automation, we are saving millions of Swedish krona, and probably saving more than 100 million Swedish krona.” (10million €). Despite cost savings, it’s important to understand, that those errands that requires a personal meeting, or a personal assistant, will always be there.”

In order to make this a success, the banks need strong authentication, to identify their customers brings a dramatic change to the society. Using technology enables banks and eGovernments to be able to sign documents electronically, where relevant details of the transaction can be reviewed and approved by the citizen.