Directory Service
Today, citizens, businesses and public authority employees have to read in agency calendars, provincial notices and various other publications to keep up-to-date on the areas of responsibility in public administration.
In the future, a (LDAP) will deliver an overview of all public authorities and their areas of responsibility. This service will contain all relevant contact information and descriptions which can be queried in standard search. It is also possible to access this information from the public authority directory on .
Keeping the directory current and as complete as possible requires the cooperation of all public authorities, which have to deliver up-to-date data on a regular basis. The directory takes on special importance with regards to the service guidelines of the EU by allowing the responsible federal, city or municipal authority to be searched for and found.
Directory Services serve as the infrastructure upon which various internal and external information services can be built. A central directory service and data model was developed for the Austrian Government for use on the LDAP.gv.at domain.
The service has two functions:
- The first is to create a directory representing all the authorities in Austria. A country-wide address and telephone directory of public authorities will make them easier to be looked up and found. This increases the transparency of public administration. The directory supports a full-text search for authorities and enables navigation through the structure of organisations.
- The second function has to do with the use of the directory service in the portal group.The authorisation process for accessing an application occurs over decentralised user management systems. These are implemented as directories on the portal. Base portals use "LDAP.gv.at-conform" directories in order to list employees as authorised users. Application portals, on the other hand, authorise administrative organisations according to their legal area of responsibility. The LDAP.gv.at specification defines a uniform data structure which comprises all portal-relevant information on organisations, organisational units, users, portals, applications and user rights.
Base and application portals must frequently exchange data and, due to the interoperable data models, are able to use the central directory service as a kind of data hub.