The Enterprise’s Portal

It was publicly launched at the end of June 2006, facilitating access to public services offered to companies and substantially extending the more than 400 services for enterprises that were being provided through the Citizen’s Portal.

The additional services now provided for the first time included the complete setting up of an enterprise through the Internet – Online Enterprise which was the virtual equivalent of the Enterprise in an Hour service which was made available from July 2005 onwards and which enables an enterprise to be set up in less than an hour, – a consultation electronic desk for matters related to enterprise activities run by the Institute of Support to Small and Medium Enterprises and Investment (IAPMEI), and the Enterprise Electronic Dossier where the different processes of each enterprise within the public administration are gathered and made easily and securely available to the enterprise’s partners or their representatives through identity authentication by advanced electronic signature certificates, assuring full transparency on the status of the respective processes  Now, to set up  an enterprise the partners do not have to be together and nobody needs to go to a public office. In fact, the partners can even be situated in different countries. The electronic payments platform developed for the Citizen’s Portal also allows the full dematerialization of payments to the state for the setting up of a company.

The Enterprise’s Portal brings together a vast set of information of interest for business activity related to the setting up, management, expansion and closure of enterprises, and provides information on opportunities for companies.  Besides this, it provides a large directory of various groups of bodies which are of special interest to companies. It also makes support tools available, such as: a diary marking important dates concerning relations with the Public Administration, specifically fiscal administration, social security and the regulatory bodies for labour relations; (ii) guides for various business activities, for example how to carry out benchmarking, acquire franchising rights, register a patent or brand, or implement an e-commerce system; (iii) simulators for various purposes.

The Enterprise's Portal also makes services available for the third sector: non-profit associations, cooperatives and non-governmental organisations.

The total number of page hits for the Enterprise’s Portal had reached more than 450 thousand, effected by more than 39,400 unique visitors to the site by March 2007. By the same date, the Enterprise’s Portal made 465 services available, along with 9 simulations (water consumption, electricity bill, Income Tax (IRS), public transport routes using several forms of transport, social security payments in the event of incapacity deriving from occupational disease, pensions, mobile telephone tariffs, private radio communication network rates) and 21 Guides (Setting up an Enterprise Online, Setting Up a Company in an Hour, Setting up a Company, Winding down a Company in an Hour, Citizen’s Card – the New Citizenship Document, Setting up an Enterprise for Young People, Working as self-employed: Obligations to be Fulfilled, How to obtain Microcredit? How to set up an Association? How to set up a Brand in an Hour? Registering a Brand, Registering a Patent, How to carry out Benchmarking? Acquiring a Franchise, How to make a Marketing Plan? Renting a Space for a Company, Fiscal Obligations and Contributions, Registering an Internet Domain, How to set up an Electronic Commerce System? How to obtain Certification for a Company?, Vehicle Registration Licence: Your Single Automobile Document).

Since being set up in July 2006 and until March 2007 the Enterprise’s Portal set up 290 new firms governed by commercial law, both limited and public limited, and registered 738 lawyers and 65 solicitors at this portal. In the same period 6,710 permanent electronic certificates, 420 appointment registers or alterations in directors and 147 registers altering shareholdings and the respective shares were carried out.

Responsibility for the running and ongoing development and expansion of the Enterprise’s Portal project was moved from The Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC)  to the Agency for Administrative Modernisation - AMA, on 1 May 2007, once this body had been formally constituted following the publication of the organic law and the statutes in the Official Gazette Diário da República, on the 27 and 30 April 2007, respectively, to which was transferred the competencies which UMIC had held in the field of electronic public administration, with continuity ensured by the transfer of the member of the UMIC Management Board responsible for electronic public administration projects to become the Director of AMA .

By the end of June 2008 more than 54,000 enterprises had been set up by the Enterprise in an Hour scheme, the system chosen by more than 70% of the companies which were set up in Portugal. Also by the end of June 2008 more than 752,300 permanent certificates had been issued via the Internet, a type of certificate which completely eliminates the respective paper version. By the end of 2007 more than 405,000 Simplified Business Information Forms (IES) had been handed in, which substitute the requirements to provide information to the registers of the Ministry of Justice, the National Statistics Institute, the Bank of Portugal and to the Ministry of Finances which had previously been carried out in four separate instances. By January 2008, more than 1 million company minutes had been published online which previously, besides being more expensive, it was compulsory to publish in the 111 Series of the DR (Official Gazette), and it has been estimated that companies have saved 15 to 17 million Euros a year through this service.