ILT streamlines the delivery of vital government services

INDUSTRY

Government

GEOGRAPHY

EMEA

CHALLENGES

To help improve the safety and sustainability of transport, infrastructure, the environment, and housing across the Netherlands, the Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate (ILT) aimed to make it easier for customers to submit permit applications, and faster for its employees to process them.

SOLUTION

  • Amplify API Management Platform
  • Axway B2Bi
  • Axway Syncplicity

RESULTS

  • Drives up back-office efficiency
  • 50% faster access to regulatory data
  • 70% boost in data quality

In the Netherlands, the Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate
(Dutch: De Inspectie Leefomgeving en Transport, ILT) works to improve
the safety and sustainability of transport, infrastructure, the environment,
and housing. As well as a 500-person back-office team to review and issue
permits to business customers, the organization has a 900-strong field
team to perform routine compliance inspections across the country.
Ben Zwartveld, Enterprise Architect at ILT, explains, “Each year, we process
around 100,000 permit applications, submitted by customers of all sizes:
from small businesses to the Netherlands’ largest airport.”
Keeping businesses moving

In the past, customers would submit permit applications via a web portal.
Some applications require substantial amounts of supporting documentation,
totaling several gigabytes of files per customer. “We used to rely on legacy
web browser technologies to allow customers to upload large files, which
began to cause challenges,” continues Zwartveld. “As these technologies fell
out of support, large transfers would frequently time out before completion on
modern web browsers — introducing delays for our customers and additional
work for our customer support teams.


“We were confident that modernizing, integrating, and automating our
workflows would deliver significant benefits for our customers and internal
stakeholders. To help us achieve our goals, we looked for an expert partner
to support our digital transformation.”

Targeting digital innovation

Reflecting its positive experience with Axway on an earlier data intragovernmental
data integration project based on B2Bi and Amplify
API Management Platform, ILT engaged the company on its new
transformation effort.

To help streamline the permit application process, ILT decided to augment
its existing Axway integration platform with Syncplicity — a cloud-based
content collaboration solution that combines seamless user experiences with
watertight security. Working with Axway, ILT integrated the solution with its
web portal via Syncplicity APIs. After customers upload their files via
Syncplicity, an automated data integration in B2Bi sends the files to ILT’s
document management system, where employees begin the review and
approval process.

“We have around 300 different permits, each of which requires its own
forms and supporting documents,” says Zwartveld. “We are now building
digital workflows for each permit application, which will ultimately deliver
a frictionless end-to-end journey for our customers.”

In parallel, ILT is harnessing B2Bi and Amplify to unlock additional efficiencies.
For example, the organization plans to use APIs to automatically publish
details of approved permits to the web, and is developing a mobile app for its
900 inspectors in the field.

Lifting service quality

ILT is confident that its new capabilities will help its personnel to focus
on delivering responsive, high-quality services to all stakeholders.
“By helping our customers to upload the correct documents on the first
attempt and giving our back-office teams faster access to regulatory data,
we will be able to cut out large amounts of manual work,” explains Zwartveld.

“In fact, we estimate that the new digital processes — powered by Axway
solutions — will help enhance back-office efficiency, contributing to faster
turnaround times for permit applications.”

With trials of its new mobile app under way for ILT’s rail and ship inspectors,
the organization is already gaining positive feedback from its business users.
“Our mobile app is particularly useful for our inspectors working on board
ships, where mobile internet connectivity can be intermittent,” says Zwartveld.

“By using Axway APIs to download data on a vessel’s equipment certificates
before the inspection, our personnel can immediately verify the compliance
status of each asset once on board using the mobile app. When we roll the
mobile app out to our entire field team, we predict that we will drive a 70
percent increase in data quality and halve the time they spend looking up
regulatory data.”

Looking to the future, ILT is exploring ways to deepen its collaboration with
other public and private stakeholders across the Netherlands.
“Going forward, we’re very interested in using API Portal to make our APIs
available to authorized communities of developers,” concludes Zwartveld.

“Secure data-sharing is vital for ILT to carry out its regulatory duties effectively — and thanks to our work with Axway, we’re making it faster and easier to serve our stakeholders across the Netherlands.”

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