Completed Drupal site or project URL: https://gewerbe.nrw/Digital business registration in North Rhine-Westphalia

Since the 1st of July 2018, the new "Gewerbe-Service-Portal.NRW" has been providing citizen-friendly eGovernment by allowing company founders in the German federal state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) to electronically register a business from home. The implementation was carried out by publicplan GmbH on behalf of d-NRW AöR. With the aid of a clearly arranged online form, commercial registration can be transmitted to the responsible public authorities with just a few clicks. Furthermore, an integrated chatbot helps the user with questions.

Service portal

In addition to the business registration, the portal offers information to the topic “foundation of an enterprise”. Furthermore, users have access to all service providers of the "Einheitliche Ansprechpartner NRW" (EA NRW). The online service supports specialised staff in taking up a service occupation or professional authentification. The search for a competent trading supervision department can also occur via the “Verwaltungssuchmaschine” (VSM) that was developed by d-NRW and publicplan GmbH on behalf of the “Ministerium für Wirtschaft, Innovation, Digitalisierung und Energie NRW” (MWIDE). The VSM is a search engine specialized for information about the public sector.

Business registration together with Chatbot “Guido“

"Guido" is a smart dialogue assistant for questions. He ensures automatic retrievability of information in plain language and is also able to identify each business type by a key. The chatbot determines every suitable business type by approaching the key through request of information. After successful determination, it is automatically transmitted to the form. Therefore, “Guido” saves the complicated search for many similar types of business. The director of publicplan GmbH, Dr. Christian Knebel says: "Thanks to our numerous eGovernment projects, we can draw on a wealth of experience in order to implement such a comprehensive portal. publicplan's integrated chatbot technology is the perfect complement to a contemporary citizen service."