Fisconetplus is the fiscal and legal knowledge base of the Ministry of Finance, the federal civil service department that administers the financial aspects of the Belgian government.

As both a portal and a document database, the primary purpose of Fisconetplus is to support the work of agents in the Finance Department, approximately 21,000 civil servants, by providing them with all of the documentation they need.

This involves around 180,000 documents, mostly in French and Dutch. Some content is also available in German and English. These elements come from the legislation, the technical departments of the Government, and also external legal or documentary sources.

By extension, some of this information is offered in the form of e-services to a set of external audiences, such as notaries, lawyers, and financial specialists such as tax advisers and accountants who require access to fiscal and legal documents. This includes more than 30,000 citizens.

Fisconetplus is one of the departments of SPF Finances’ General Administration for Strategic Expertise and Support. On average, the portal receives more than 200,000 visits per month. SPF Finances is keenly aware of the importance of protecting personal data. That is why it only asks for the data that is strictly necessary to offer a qualitative service. It also makes the necessary arrangements to guarantee the protection of personal data.

For civil servants and for targeted audiences, Fisconetplus can now deliver legible, reliable information that is right up to date. This e-service is mainly characterized by:

• a more user-friendly interface
• more intuitive navigation, much easier and higher-performance viewing and search features thanks to filters, links, and simultaneous display of the different versions of a document, etc.
• a personalized workspace where the user can store favorite publications to open them directly, create automatic alerts to stay informed of anything new or any modification applied to a document, in a specific area of taxation or
  according to search criteria personalized by the user
• access to all of the informative documentation produced by SPF Finances.

The aim of the project, was to create the editing tool itself, to migrate existing documents, and update the document base.

Fisconetplus is based on Microsoft SharePoint, a cloud-based service that allows companies and organizations to share and manage content, knowledge, and applications to encourage teamwork, find information quickly, and work together transparently.

Overall, for the department in charge of Fisconetplus, which includes around thirty civil servants, the aim was to facilitate the pre-press process by making it more accessible, more efficient, and safer via the SharePoint portal. Above and beyond the addition of personalized services, the project required the document creation, approval, and editing processes to be revised.

“Fisconetplus is a living system that is constantly being enriched, even if only through case law,” says Luc Joosten. “It was not a case of starting with a blank sheet of paper and creating an entirely new system, but updating an existing system based on a technology that has been tested in the cloud.”

The project was conducted by IRIS in the context of the invitation to tender for the renewal of the Fisconetplus platform with an integrated solution.

IRIS’ experience in the SharePoint environment weighed heavily in its favor. In addition to technology transfer, this involved unprecedented data porting. In short: migrate and improve, but without losing anything already available. All of the knowledge is now gathered into a single system.

“In addition to the technical part, the Change Management part was important. The user support was also decisive. There was an obligation to achieve a result,” adds Luc Joosten. Moreover, for the Ministry of Finance, it was their first major project in the cloud!”

From its position at the cutting edge of innovation, IRIS was able to commit itself to obtaining guaranteed results, with regard to both the quality of the services provided and meeting the deadlines defined prior to the project. The various stages of migration, configuration, and deployment were conducted in accordance with a standardized process.

Finally, experience played its part. IRIS and the Ministry of Finance are old acquaintances. Amongst other large-scale projects, IRIS implemented the automatic processing of VAT declarations and private individuals’ tax returns with its recognition software and its document management solution.