Questions & Answers

What is a life situation?

Based on legal obligations in actual life situations, such as birth, marriage, etc, the administrative procedures in connection with those situations are described, the necessary documents, arising fees, deadlines as well as easily retrievable forms and templates are provided. A broad range of additional information regarding the same subject matter completes the offer.

Which situation comes first - how does it work?

Information according to life situations, such as birth, marriage, automobile and university studies, is certainly very helpful for a citizen. In principle, the aim should be to offer complete information to a large part of the target group, instead of merely "half" the information to everybody!
We offer to help you devise a concept and plan the project development.

What is the difference between circumstances and life situations?

There is no difference. Circumstances, life situations, business episodes, facts of life, theme areas are all terms for the same approach: a person is confronted with a new situation and needs to do something. We explain in which order and where action must, can or should be taken.

"Automobile" is not a life situation - or is it?

No, "Automobile (Car, Motor Car, Vecicle)" is not a situation in the original sense. But, this is the best way for citizens or businessmen and -women to understand what we mean and what information is to be found behind the term. And that is our priority.

It is impossible to explain all the administrative requirements for all citizens. What do we do?

This is impossible for all public authorities and for any external content staff.
After setting clear priorities, one needs to decide which critical part of the inquiries from citizens (say 80 percent) one wishes to fulfil. Covering 100 percent is impossible.
Our experience at net-value has shown that it is essential to fully satisfy that part of the population we wish to cater to. For instance, 80 percent of the citizens must be able to fulfil 100 percent of their administrative formalities using the information provided. Width goes before depth.

Every government office is responsible for its own content maintenance - is this not more convenient and cheaper then centralised editing?

No. If you expect dozens, and at a later stage, hundreds of editors to write the right texts in the same language style at the right time, and update these continuously, you will be disappointed when you see the final product. Every person has a different way of thinking, of setting priorities and will therefore write differently. The victim of a de-centralised editing staff is usually the citizen, who must put together the jigsaw puzzle using different information structures, language styles, formats, etc, and who will end up confused and frustrated.

My governmental office only deals with the administrative formalities it is legally responsible for. How are we going to create contents that cover all the life situations of citizens? Other public authorities are responsible for some of the official formalities that need to be taken care of in one and the same life situation.

Developing contents in line with the principle of life situations is a new challenge for the authorities, as they must be implemented jointly by several public offices in order to be truly citizen-oriented. Experience has shown that only an external content editor is able to warrant the smooth implementation and data maintenance that represents all themes from the citizens' viewpoint, in the language of the citizens and with the right emphasis and balance.
Yes, that is also why it is net-value's successful key activity - we are very proud of what we do!

Is an external content editor not too expensive? Our budgets are tight.

It became apparent that the experience and independence of external research and editing of contents for public authorities reduce and avoid high disinvestments and friction within the public offices to such an extent that the calculated additional costs of external editing are very much worthwhile. By gaining time and avoiding failures and generating synergy effects.

Write to us!

We did not make up any of this, we speak from experience. And we have learned a good deal doing it for several years.
Would you like to know more? Write to us!