BUPi is making a difference by questioning old, heavy processes and re-thinking them in an integrated way. It is changing the way different entities work, breaking barriers, creating the basis for implementation of proper end-to-end data processes orchestration. Property life cycle management is covered mainly by three Government agencies. Although most business processes are internal, related to own competencies, there are hundreds of business processes that require interaction and data exchange, between these agencies. All these data flows are manually driven and, in most cases, require paper documents exchanged between the agencies. This yields huge workloads, manual data input in several systems and a long paper-trail, difficult to track. All these activities are slow, error-prone and sometimes impossible to execute in time. The costs are great, whether financial or other, less tangible and hard to quantify.

1. State Department of Justice, the Tax Authority , Registry Authority (IRN), and Territory General Directorate (DGT)
2. Different Companies brought technical understanding, knowledge on technology trends and experience in process reengineering.
3. Citizens and Technicians, via interview of organized focus groups, that brought real cases knowledge, aches and other feedback, improving the overall implemented processes and user experience

BUPi supports: citizens, qualified technicians and managers from different Municipalities, Land Registry officers and system administrators. Citizens - can create property identification processes, or go the municipalities facilities and be attended by a qualified technician. Qualified technicians (over 800) can access a dashboard with KPIs critical for their activities. Other Public Agencies/Entities, benefit with harmonized and updated data.

We have been able to swiftly gain momentum in knowing the Portuguese territory, and to begin the integration of many public and private organizations in our interoperability platform. BUPi functions not as a centralized repository of the information already existing within the partner entities, but as an interoperability platform through which the information can flow according to the pre-defined business rules. The project’s partners can make use of this newly available information and, in turn, incorporate it in their business processes, allowing the innovation brought up by BUPi to propagate as an impactful digital transformation in these organizations. While still in its infancy, we know our partners, whether public or private, are already preparing for their own simplification revolution, which wouldn’t be possible without the information sharing paradigm allowed by BUPi.

It has been challenging to get all stakeholders onboard. As per the old paradigm, the entities’ own information represents power. It has been a challenge to make all stakeholders understand the advantages and opportunities of collaboration. Being a political project, there was the need to produce and communicate results faster than they could be achieved, which became a source of internal pressure and an incentive to compromising quality. We evolved a stronger stakeholder engagement and management set of processes that allowed to increase anticipation of such requests and stabilize the backlog, increasing our workflow and throughput. Finally, the legislation that the project inherited hindered BUPI’s innovation potential. Processes were hence adopted that could capture the innovation ideated and proposed a new iteration of the law that could allow BUPi to innovate according to its new terms and gave enough elasticity to accommodate further future innovation initiatives.

In order to achieve adequate supporting infrastructure and services, BUPi because the first platform providing public services to migrate to the Cloud in Portugal. The project was hosted within the Ministry of Justice’s infrastructure, which could not expand to the level required with the agility needed by the expansion of the project to the national scope. Originally supported by a pilot project’s legislation, as soon as the first proof of concept gave positive results and was proved a successful approach, a new law was issued allowing for BUPi to grow beyond its scope. Our leadership has worked to create a culture similar to a start-up company, uncommon within the Portuguese public administration, in which our team members are informal, agile in making decisions, with a decentralized authority structure, and a shared purpose driving a committed team.

A similar concept, but at a smaller scale has independently come to life in another public institute, AGIF, which seeks to increase the protection of people, their assets and reduce the impact of rural fires. This concept of integration and interoperability platform between different organizations can be used in different sectors to promote collaboration, sharing and open-source movements. Other countries in Europe and other continents have similar problems and BUPi’s solution can be successfully replicated, enabling a simplified cadastral registration built upon digital services, once only principle and data driven decisions.

We have learned that implementing an innovative project based on collaboration and information sharing, involving several different and highly conservative organizations, is quite challenging, and will invariably find opposition from the established paradigm. However, after the implementation, and after the benefits become clear and begin materializing, the concept gains credibility and allows for several, both expected and unexpected, opportunities for digitally revolutionize the processes, resulting in a better service for citizens, users and stakeholders.

The project is implementing a transversal policy of innovation based on the use of LiDAR technology, new deductive algorithms, and the implementation of emerging technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality and, in the future, exploration of the metaverse. BUPi is also analyzing and promoting new business models that may be put into place, with the objective of increasing the economic value generated to the land owners.