Although not specifically created to address the COVID-19 outbreak, the pandemic has highlighted the importance of solutions such as the Public Administration’s SMS Gateway (GAP), a central technology platform that enables mobile messaging (SMS and MMS) between Portuguese public entities from different sectors and citizens. It was created with the focus of interlinking and streamlining communications between the Public Administration and citizens, enabling informational services (such as alerts and notifications) and transactional ones. Managed by the Administrative Modernization Agency (AMA), the GAP is available for public entities that wish to reuse it for their communication services with citizens, as it is the case of the Ministries of Health, Internal Affairs, and Transportation, among others. Through technologies and languages fit for the mobile world, GAP provides the scalability, reliability and performance needed by the most demanding organizations. What makes this system unique is its simplicity: simple services for simple tasks. It uses simple technology, SMS, which has been implemented for several years and of easy access to the ordinary citizen. Its major advantages are the: 1) simplicity of the service, 2)number and diversity of available services within the Portuguese public landscape and 3)shared nature of the service.

https://www.ama.gov.pt

• Portugal

The GAP provides two basic types of communication with the user, which ensures its replicability: - A first and simpler informational communication (one way); - And a second, transactional communication, based on a short number sent by the user/citizen that triggers the interaction with the public entity (i.e., its information system) and consequent dedicated response. On the first mode, we find information such as scheduled appointments, service subscription confirmations or notification of deadlines for compliance with legal obligations. On the second we have examples where the user provides the civil identification number and date of birth and the system returns information about the polling place and polling station in the electoral processes. We also have extensions to these functionalities, like the combination of information systems that allow, for example, the authentication with double validation factor, which already happens in the medical electronic prescriptions or in the Digital Mobile Key. This latter is the Portuguese mobile eID scheme, in which the user’s PIN is entered through the Internet and is complemented with a token received by the citizen in his/her mobile phone, which is sent through GAP, thus conferring an increased degree of security.

Favourable legislation/political support, a financial model with shared costs, and savings based on the reuse of an existing platform make GAP a very sustainable solution. National legislation is increasingly focusing on the Portuguese Interoperability Platform as the preferred – and exclusive – means to exchange data in the public administration, given its financial benefits. The return on investment is mainly attained from the benefits of using a shared IT solution such as GAP, that represents significant savings. In order to promote the penetration of GAP in the public sector landscape, at the first stage, some of the entities did not pay for SMSs, being such cost covered by AMA. Nowadays though, entities joining the GAP community are paying for their SMS, which is still more convenient for them, as they did not have to develop their own payments platform, and have no burden of maintaining and updating the platform. Additionally, because of its large scale usage, the cost of each SMS is very competitive and entities using the GAP pay only the cost of their SMS, plus a small fee to cover the maintenance costs of the SMS Gateway.

This project strengthens the country's existing communication structure so that citizens can all receive important information in an efficient and timely manner. This project therefore promotes the WSIS values in the community such as C2. Information and communication infrastructure; C5. Building confidence and security in use of ICTs; C7. ICT applications: benefits in all aspects of life — E-government; C7. ICT applications: benefits in all aspects of life — E-health.