Riga
Enablers
1.1 - Skills
Does the local authority have internally any position such as service designers OR user researchers OR user experience experts? |
No |
Has the local authority provided training on service design or user research to its employees in the last three years? |
No |
Has the local authority provided training on ICT to its employees in the last three years? Evidence: Yes, Riga digital agency provides regular training to its ~100 employees including providing access to an e-learning platform where employees can select courses that interest them. |
Yes |
Has the local authority provided training on ICT to citizens in the last three years? |
No |
1.2 - Strategies
Does the local authority have a digital strategy less than three years old? Evidence: Yes, Riga digital agency is an organization underneath the Riga city council that is responsible for municipal digital transformation and the provision of innovative, high-quality, and secure ICT products and services. Currently, the Riga city council has a new medium-term digital transformation strategy for 2022-2024, which is synchronized with the development of priorities of the Riga Development Program 2021–2027 and the overall Riga Sustainable Development Strategy 2030. In addition to this Riga digital agency also develops a yearly short-term digital strategy for the Riga city council. |
Yes |
Does the local authority have a position of Chief Digital Officer or equivalent? Evidence: Yes, Riga city council has a Chief Digital Officer that leads Riga digital agency and ~100 of its employees. |
Yes |
Does the local authority have formal service standard (like for instance the UK Government Digital Service standards)? Evidence: Yes, Latvia has regulations of Minister Cabinet Nr. 402 for "public sector e-services" that we follow. https://likumi.lv/ta/id/292261-valsts-parvaldes-e-pakalpojumu-noteikumi. However, we don't have an internal one. |
Yes |
Does the local authority have design guidelines valid across departments, including for instance standards or protocols for simple language? |
No |
Does the local authority have in place formal methods to monitor and enforce such service standards and design guidelines? |
No |
Are service design or user experience mentioned in digital strategy or some other strategy level document? Evidence: Yes, user experience is one of the success metrics inside our digital transformation strategy. |
Yes |
1.3 - Ecosystem
Does the local authority provide APIs to other administrations and to private companies? Evidence: Yes, we have over 200 data-sharing agreements (mainly between the public sector) using various ICT systems, services, and data transfer ways, we also have 5 ODATA open data API services. |
Yes |
Does the local authority use standardised services modules, provided at national or European level (e.g. CEF building blocks, national payment service or eID)? Evidence: Yes, the most common is the national identity identification system (eID). |
Yes |
Has the local authority carried out within the last two years innovative forms of procurement, such as pre-commercial procurement, hackathons, other forms of collaboration with SMEs and startups? Evidence: Cooperation with the start-up ecosystem is mostly handled by Riga City Council Investment and Tourism Agency, as well as the City Development Department. We have several financial mechanisms that fund start-up ecosystem organizations, as well as incubation and acceleration programs. We are also in the process of developing a start-up sandbox concept for more coordinated cooperation with individual start-ups. We spend around 200,000 EUR on this annually.
In addition to that, we have smart city solution pilot territories in the city where we work with companies to test innovative solutions in an urban environment. Riga City also takes an active part in various hackathons and incubators that are organized by local partners. |
Yes |
User-Centricity Performance
2.1 - Co-creation
Does the local authority habitually (as standard practice on every new digital service) use service co-design / user research sessions in developing its services before their launch? |
No |
Does the local authority habitually carry out users' research sessions on a regular basis (at least once a year) AFTER the launch of a service? |
No |
Does the local authority habitually use specific service co-design / user research sessions with disadvantaged communities (e.g. minorities, elderly, disabled people, etc.)? |
No |
Does the local authority habitually use web analytics and other service data to improve digital services (e.g. completion rates and most frequent errors)? |
No |
Does the local authority habitually plan for releasing regular (at least once a year) new releases for existing digital services (not including technical updates automatically provided by software provider)? |
No |
2.2 - Supply of online services
Does the local authority provide the majority of services fully online (out of total services provided that could potentially be digitalised)? Evidence: Yes, all of the services (100%) are available online unless of system failure in which case the service is carried out by the paper. |
Yes |
Does the local authority have a dedicated app that is downloaded by more than 20% of the population? |
No |
Does the local authority offer at least one proactive service, where users are automatically signed up for a service based on the government-held data? |
No |
Has the local authority already fulfilled the requirements of the Single Digital Gateway (deadline end of 2022)? |
No |
Does the local authority provide habitually to citizens the possibility to check online the progress status of the services they request? |
No |
2.3 - Useability
Does the local authority habitually carry out useability assessment of its online services, using standard tools such as System Useability Scale (SUS)? |
No |
Do all the websites or websites sections of the local authority have consistent design and look&feel? |
No |
Does the local authority provide the possibility to citizens to have live audio/video interaction (such as videoconference or single telephone number)? |
No |
Are the local authority web services in line with accessibility guidelines (WCAG)? |
No |
2.4 - Security and privacy
Are the users able to use national eID, as a means of authentication for online services requiring authentication? Evidence: Yes, we use the national identity identification system (eID). |
Yes |
Has the local authority put in place measures to ensure citizens' control over the data held about them (such as seeing who has access to the data and for what reason, correcting data, etc.)? Evidence: Yes, but this has to be requested manually. We do not have an automated solution for this. |
Yes |
Has the local authority in place documents on measures, practices or procedures on ICT security? Evidence: Yes, we have over 15 internal documents on measures, practices, or procedures on ICT security, including ICT security strategy, cyber security and system restoration procedures, ICT security guidelines, and much more. They are developed with the help of the Riga center for data protection and ICT security and implemented by Riga digital agency. |
Yes |
2.5 - Citizens redress and feedback mechanisms
Does the local authority provide online mechanisms for both citizens and businesses to complain and seek change to a decision? |
No |
Has the local authority put in place structured means for users to provide feedback? |
No |
2.6 - Interoperability
Does the local authority apply the once-only principle in its services, so that citizens are not required to submit documents already held by the administration? |
No |
Does the local authority encourage the use of standards in IT development and procurement? Evidence: Yes, in most of our IT development-related procurement, we include IT standard requirements that have to be fulfilled by the subcontractors. There are also laws that govern that certain ICT systems have to follow certain standards and certifications. |
Yes |
Has the local authority policies in place to encourage the use of open source solutions? Evidence: Yes, since the creation of the Riga digital agency we put the main emphasis on the use of already existing open-source solutions. |
Yes |
Outcome
3.1 - Adoption
Considering only services that are available online, are the majority of transactions carried out online? |
No |
Does the local authority publish data on usage of online services (such as a dashboard with metrics on transactions) on a regular basis? |
No |
3.2 - Reduction of burden
Does the authority measure the average time saved by citizens when using an online service compared to the offline one? |
No |
Does the authority measure the amount of annual financial savings for the public administration? |
No |
3.3 - Satisfaction
Does the local authority measure the citizens’ level of satisfaction with regards to the services’ provision? |
No |
Is the share of satisfied users above 80%? |
No |
Background Information
614618
Total population
5500
Total number of employees in the city/region administration
1.15 bn EUR
Total annual budget (last year or average of the last three years)
100
Number of ICT specialists employed directly (full-time equivalent)
50
Number of ICT specialists employed indirectly (subcontracting/outsourcing)