Client: European Commission, Director General Taxation and Customs
The Programme Information and Collaboration Space (PICS) project had as its objective to strengthen the collaborative efficiency amongst professionals working in National Tax and Customs Administrations across the European Union (approx. 30 countries). To do so, a secure portal was developed and implemented allowing for a collaborative sharing of information and tools across the national administrations and the central European Commission Tax and Customs Unit.
The PICS portal was purposefully developed to serve the complex multicultural reality of the European administrative services that functions in twenty-three official languages – with each national administration working autonomously yet handling similar challenges. The PICS project ensures that each member can better meet these challenges: learning, sharing and building on what other members are doing and vice-versa. The collaborative tools withinPICS allows for effective distance work and reduced travel costs.
Through our use of project facilitation, design, documentation, and training, percolab contributed to establishing the project vision and road map, and creating the information system design, production of functional specifications, and development of prototypes. We provided graphic design, interface design, quality assurance (functional testing, in situ testing, end-to-end testing, user testing) and produced content in the form of site micro-content, help texts, and user guides.
The result is a flexible system created by the European Commission but easily adaptable for each national administration to manage in accordance to local needs and reality: the portal (designed in English) accommodates the use of all twenty-three European languages and users are provided with various structured forms and workflows that sync with complex context.
Site : https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/pics [secure]
Technologies : Drupal, MySQL, PHP, XHTML, XML, CSS2/3, Flash vidéo