Purchase of an electronic season ticket of the Flemish public transport company De Lijn

Buying a season ticket for yourself, your partner and/or your children from your own home? This has been possible since 5 October 2007 through the website of the Flemish public transport company De Lijn.  All you need is a Belgian electronic identity card (eID) and a card reader. You no longer have to go to your local council to collect a family composition certificate and then queue in the Lijnwinkel! Through the MAGDA platform the web application automatically retrieves your family composition and you immediately receive the discount you are entitled to. Moreover, you receive your season ticket five times faster than before. As of mid-2008, the same system will be used at the ticket offices of De Lijn, the so-called Lijnwinkels.

You can easily buy a season ticket of De Lijn from your own home. Without any paperwork. You will receive it almost immediately: in two to three days as opposed to the two-week waiting period in the past. How is this possible? You used to have to submit a paper application accompanied by the necessary certificates. Moreover, you had to pay the season ticket in advance via transfer. Now, both the order and the payment are done online and your season ticket is posted to you within 24 hours.

De Lijn has spared neither time nor expense to make the website for purchasing season tickets perfectly user-friendly. In the initial stage we involved collaborators of the Lijnwinkels who know their way around the whole season ticket application procedure.  After that we called on a usability bureau to refine the digital application procedure on the basis of user trials. In this, we also took account of people with a visual disability (a very important group of public transport users). After all, our final objective is to design a website which has been awarded the 'AnySurfer’ quality label.

The result is a very simple application procedure. Before buying a season ticket, citizens receive detailed information. After that, they complete the procedure which is explained in clear, well-defined steps. On top of the screen users can gain a sense of where they are via the breadcrumb trail with recognisable icons.

Through the Flemish government’s MAGDA platform for data exchange the web application retrieves the data we need to calculate the discount. As customers pay less for their second child and nothing at all from the third child onwards, the data about the family composition that are retrieved on-the-fly through MAGDA are very important. Moreover, over sixty Flemish municipalities contribute to the payment of the season ticket. The customer’s discount is immediately displayed on the screen.

De Lijn is developing the project in three stages:

1. The current online application for season tickets (entirely transactional process through the Internet).
2. An extension to the grant of all types of free season tickets or concessionary rate season tickets (widows and orphans, jobseekers, over-65s,…).  It will be automatically checked whether the citizen belongs to one of these social groups.
3. Use of the web interface at the Lijnwinkels: the customer presents him or herself at one of these offices with his or her eID or completes a form there by means of which he or she gives permission to De Lijn to retrieve his or her data.

Advantages for citizens

No more running about. In the past customers had to collect a certificate of family composition from their local council and submit this, together with a paper season ticket application, to De Lijn. After that they had to pay for it through the bank. And wait for two weeks. Now, all these steps are executed online in one and the same breath.
During the entire process, De Lijn protects the safety and consumer rights of its customers.

1. The access via the eID and personal PIN code guarantees optimal protection of the personal data.
2. Payment takes place through a secured interface. This is possible via credit card or Bancontact, but also via the PC banking software of the ING, Dexia and KBC banks.
3. Customers have a right of revocation, which means they can cancel their order within seven working days. De Lijn refunds the money to the customer's account.
4. Minors cannot order any season tickets themselves, because bookings with the eID of a minor are automatically refused.
5. Customers immediately see how much season tickets for their family cost.

Advantages for the administration

Once the application will be at cruising speed, it will save us 670,000 Euros per year, according to De Lijn calculations. The Lijnwinkels entered all the data manually – with a margin of error of about 2% to 5%. Thanks to the application no more errors are to be corrected, which in itself saves us 130 man-days per year. Moreover, the quality of service provision is substantially improved.
If a growing number of citizens will buy their season tickets online, this will reduce the pressure of work for staff members of the Lijnwinkels, especially when the sale of season tickets reaches its peak between 15 July and 30 September. The staff will have more time to provide a customer-friendly service.
Even the administrative services of the Flemish municipalities will save time, because citizens will no longer come to them for certificates of their family composition.

Lessons learnt

1. Projects can be realised in a short period of time, provided all partners are on the same wavelength in terms of views and work methods. The project started mid-February and lasted until mid-October. By waiting until after the peak period for season tickets, experience can be gained during one year and efforts can continue to establish a properly functioning system.
2. Make sure you are working in conformity with the rules of privacy on time. It is very important to make your intentions clear to CORVE, the KSZ and the Privacy Commission. First make an appointment to explain your intentions. Only then compile your dossier. This way you avoid having to thoroughly revise your dossier. Also make a complete inventory of all internal divisions and external partners you need, on beforehand. Set up a proper consultation structure for you and your strategic partners to work with.
3. Ensure a full end-to-end integration of all components and start this integration in time in order to avoid any surprises afterwards.