Accenture expands Norway's citizen-centric portal

Accenture Ltd. will continue the development and operation of Altinn, Norway's public sector online portal, under a new nine-year contract, which includes three one-year options. In total, the award is valued at approximately $44.4 million.

Under the Altinn II contract, Accenture will provide a new phase of application development and management of the Altinn e-government portal. The contract also includes implementation of a simplified user interface, collaboration services, an advanced security solution and operation of the portal.

Accenture and Avanade Inc., a global IT company in Seattle specializing in the Microsoft platform, designed Altinn using Microsoft .NET and other components.
The Norwegian government started the Altinn portal service in 2002 to simplify government interactions with businesses and citizens by providing a single electronic channel for written communications. That allowed businesses and citizens to communicate with government agencies through a single entry point.

The Altinn portal became fully operational in the spring of 2004 and has been highly successful in meeting Norway's objectives for citizen-centric e-government services, Accenture officials said. For example, according to 2007 statistics, 78 percent of Norway's businesses and self-employed workers submitted their tax returns electronically via Altinn.

Accenture ranks No. 23 on Washington Technology's 2008 Top 100 list of the largest federal government prime contractors.