EasyBiz from Victorian Government to reduce paperwork for business

EasyBiz is a web site to reduce government paper for small business. It is funded by the Australian Government's $50 million Regulation Reduction Incentive Fund, but is being piloted by local government in Victoria.

The pilot project will work with a subset of transactions for planning, building, health and local permits. EasyBiz plan to have 25 transactions online by March 2007.

EasyBiz will provide an online channel for small business to apply for council permits. This means they can discover the permits they need, prepare and submit applications 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. EasyBiz will make this process more efficient, by reducing re-work on forms, and re-using data across forms.

The vision is that EasyBiz will eventually allow small businesses to complete, save and submit all their Local Government compliance forms online. EasyBiz will provide for interconnection with State and Federal compliance forms systems to allow businesses to potentially manage all their government compliance requirements at a single web portal of their choice.

An interesting part of the process is that some of the corrdination for the project is being done on-line. The agenda, minutes and documents of some meetings are avialble on the Govdex system:

collaboration GovDex is a resource developed by government agencies to facilitate business process collaboration across policy portfolios (eg. Taxation, Human Services etc.) and administrative jurisdictions i.e. federal, state or local government levels.

GovDex promotes effective and efficient information sharing, which is core to achieving collaboration. It provides governance, tools, methods and re-usable technical components that government agencies can use to assemble and deploy information services on their different technology platforms. GovDex is a key enabler to a whole of government approach to IT service development and deployment.

GovDex is managed by the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) in the Department of Finance & Administration. AGIMO ...

From: Welcome to GovDex

Some of the content:

Oakton identified gaps between existing VBMK functionality and EasyBiz requirements, including:

Forms platform is not established in either system. One key item to consider is the type of form (PDF v HTML) and the supplier (Adobe, IBM Workplace forms or XForms).
The main considerations will be sustainability and cost; Output Manager may need work in VBMK to meet EasyBiz requirements ...
Minutes, TDRG Meeting 2, Project No LA10854, 4 September 2006

Further work has been identified to progrress the design of the EasyBiz Portal. We estimate this work will take one month to complete by Jason and understand that this work needs to commence later this week. The work required is as follows:

• Determining the Forms Platform solution
• Determining the Payment Gateway solution
• Mapping requirements to existing VBMK platform components within the scope of closing any perceived technical gaps
• Architecting new EasyBiz components and data flows within the VBMK platform
• Leveraging off the VBMK/BEP Smart Forms demonstration project to achieve the above goals
• Identification and design of extensions to existing VBMK components
• Identification and design of extensions to new VBMK components

Agenda, EasyBiz Technical Development Reference Group Meeting, 29 Sept 2006

This document provides a “broad” definition of each of the EasyBiz transactions and may
vary slightly for each council. ...

Application to build over easements (EB001)
This permit is required if a small/home based business intends to build over an existing
easement. eg sewerage and water connected to property. The permit must be applied for any new construction or enhancements to an existing building. This is a Building Services.

Builders Refuse Bins (EB002)
This permit is required by any small/home based business that intends to place a bin skip/bulk rubbish container onto a public road or public access area. In most instances this will relate to construction sites or large public events. The bulk rubbish bin may be placed on the road, on the nature strip. This is a Local Law permit.

Building Inspections (EB003)
This permit is required by any small/home based business that requires council to inspect a building that a building permit was granted for previously by Council. This is a Building Services permit. ...

From: EasyBiz Transaction Definitions

Some of the other GovDex supported projects are:

1. Electronic Development and Assessment Forum Communication Protocol (eDAF)
2. Grants Management Public (GrantsMgmtPublic)
3. International Standards (INTLSTDS)
4. National Name & Address Project (NameAddress)
5. RRIF - National Electronic Development Assessment (NeDA)
6. RRIF - Red Tape Blueprints Project (NSW) (RTB)
   

From: My GovDex Communities