An important source of revenue for the city of Sousse is generated by tourism and business, and in particular, the license fees for the use of public space by terraces, cafes, restaurants or shops. In recent years, two dynamics have constituted a difficulty for an effective tax recovery: urban sprawl has been translated into an increase in informal facilities, which constitute up to 60% in 2014. In addition, municipalities have suffered from a loss of authority since the political turmoil of 2011. As a consequence, recovering the license fees on terraces has constituted a considerable challenge and municipal revenues in this sector have decreased by 30% from 2011 to 2014.

In this context, the municipality of Sousse decided to develop an application facilitating the recovery of fees on terraces, targeting both a more effective tax recovery and an improved management of the municipal service responsible for the activity.

In 2014, the municipality of Sousse launched a program for optimizing the tax recovery of local businesses holding terraces in the city. In order to do so, the municipality reached out to a local start that was made responsible for developing an application that facilitates the follow up of tax recovery. The start up developed:

• A digital map of the city containing 32,000 polygons, based on a satellite map
  
• A database geo-localizing (GPS, ArcGIS) 2147 terraces (both legal and anarchic) and information on the owner (name, authorization number, payment record, telephone number, etc.)
  
• A program facilitating the follow up on the payments and the organization of control missions.
  

The project is mainly based on the development of a GIS layer on terraces, linked with a tailor-made application jointly defined by the municipality and the startup, involving service directors and municipal servants. To complete the application, the municipality aims to develop two further mobile features:

• An instrument that facilitates an improved interaction between the municipality and the owners through an online document exchange: the municipality can send notices to the owners, while the latter can consult their payments online.
  
• A second instrument that provides a space for citizens to express their complaints, for instance on terraces that difficult their circulation. Complaints can be sent in the form of geo-localized photos and through any smartphone with a GPS function. Once the complaint is registered and verified, the municipality will follow up on the matter. This mobile application will be part of a broader project of a city application to be developed in the second half of 2015.
  

The project seeks to improve the control over and increase fiscal revenues, optimize the effectiveness of the municipal service responsible for the recovery, improve the capacities of municipal servants, enforce fiscal equality between taxpayers, reduce risks of clientele practices and corruption within municipal management, support entrepreneurship in the city and promote Private-Public Partnerships between ICT companies and the municipality.

Phase 1. Diagnostics and project conception

Facing a decrease in municipal tax recovery on the terraces, the municipal service responsible for their recovery opts for reforming its management making use of spatial data. Given that the GIS unit of the municipality did not dispose of a layer of information on the occupation of public space, the GIS unit and the municipal service for tax recovery launched a feasibility study on the possibility of introducing a new GIS layer. Both services decided furthermore to develop an application for the follow up on tax recovery. The board of IT services, in its function as project manager, drafted the Terms of Reference containing the missions of development and training that had previously been discussed with the different services and validated by the municipal commission and the mayor. Given that the project is aligned with a number of strategic objectives agreed upon by the city, it was included as one of the activities of the ‘Development Strategy of the City of Sousse 2030’, drafted between 2012 and 2014, and financed by the European program ENPI-CBC Med under the stewardship of MEDCITES.

During this first phase, the following activities were carried out:

• Identification and analysis of the needs of the municipal service responsible for tax recovery
  
• Interviews with the urbanism, finances, human resources and IT departments, as well as the servants of the municipal service for tax recovery
  
• Discussion and validation by the municipal commission and the mayor
  

Phase 2. Contract with the private counterpart

• Drafting of the Terms of Reference
  
• Definition of the missions to be carried out by the private company
  
• Selection of the start up
  
• Drafting, negotiating and signing of the contract. The contract contains, in addition to the development of the application and the database, seven training sessions to enable the municipal services to use, update and adjust the application
  
• Constitution of a project team integrated by three municipal structures (Service for Tax Recovery, department of urbanism and the GIS unit, IT department) and the startup.

Phase 3. Execution of the contract and product delivery 

• Conception of the map
  
• Field data
  
• Development of the application
  
• Test
  
• Training for staff
  
• Evaluation meetings
  
• Delivery

Management and governance

The application is managed by the IT department, together with another ten applications.

The total costs of the project correspond to 14,000 euros.

The application was launched very recently, in July 2015. However, the development of the application in partnership with the startup furthermore allowed the municipal department to manage and plan its activities in a more efficient way. The project has helped to update the localization of the terraces and in particular identify informal ones. Before the project started, the City had registered over 700 terraces, now this number has tripled and reached a total of 2147. The application has also changed the management of the department responsible for collecting the fees, reducing the recovery time and increasing the number of notices distributed per day. The project is expected to increase municipal revenues in this area by 20% in 2015.

The project particularly had positive impact on the work of the municipal agents in charge of the follow-up of the collection of the tax on terraces, and more specifically on the following four actions:

• Planning of control missions of the tax recovery service. Thanks to a detailed map, the municipal service defines the circuits of the field visit according to three criteria: distribution of payment notices to be received within three weeks, distribution of non-payment notices; localization. Being able to determine the circuit according to either the type of mission or the localization of the targeted owners has led to a reduction in transportation costs and time.
  
• Evaluation of results and performance. The performance of the service is evaluated through the number of notices distributed and the payment and tax collection delays.
  
• Follow-up on tax collection. The application allows to adapt and print notices and to produce follow-up reports, as well as to integrate new data on terraces (authorized or anarchic). The updates are done by field workers and thanks to GPS tools who export and integrate data to the GIS layer. The project has resulted in the identification of informal terraces or other types of non-regulated use of public space by local businesses (the municipality had registered 700 terraces, and now has collected data on a total of 2147 terraces). The municipality expects an increase of at least 20% in tax collection on this budget item in 2015.
  
• Internal and external communication on planning and evaluation. The application allows to better define the position to adopt on non-payment and anarchic uses of public space, and to coordinate efforts between the municipal departments and the municipal police.
  

Main difficulties of the project, as defined by the municipality of Sousse, are as follows:

• The appropriation of the IT tool by the public servants who perceive that their capacity of action is being reduced
  
• The acceptation of this new management tool by the business owners who perceive it as a coercive measure to increase their conformity with the law and payments
  
• The challenge of dealing with anarchic terraces that are sometimes linked to informal activities in strictly residential areas. The question here is the incoherence between paying taxes on an informal and sometimes long-standing activity. The municipality currently negotiates with different stakeholders to define a common approach.
  

According to the municipality, the key elements to take into account in order to guarantee the success of the project and of the partnership were:

• The transfer of responsibilities and private sector expertise to the municipality, in order to ensure that, once the contract comes to terms, municipal services will be able to properly maintain and update the project. The municipality of Sousse has negotiated with the company to hold seven training sessions for the city’s civil servants, so that they got used to the map, the database and other applications.
  
• The inclusion of the application’s final users in the conception, implementation and assessment of the project. The City Council should be careful not just to inform them on the project, but also to consult them for its collective elaboration. The city of Sousse worked in close cooperation with municipal agents to involve them in the process so they did not feel the application was designed to control them, but rather to assist them in their daily tasks. Several consultation meetings took place with the agents before and during the development of the application, and some of their suggestions were included in the project design.
  
• The communication with the population in order to guarantee the adoption and support to the initiative. One of the main difficulties faced by the city of Sousse was the adoption of this new management tool by shopkeepers, who were forced to comply with the regulatory demands. This was addressed by a regular communication with the population in general, and with shopkeepers in particular so that they could understand the importance of taxpayer equality.
  
• A strong coordination between the different municipal services and other stakeholders involved in the initiative. Within municipal services, the project was carried out by three main structures: the service for tax collection, the department of urbanism and particularly the GIS unit, and the department of IT. Regular meetings, as well as the clear definition of everyone’s tasks, were vital to the success of the project. In order to ensure good governance, a team – constituted by city servants and representatives of the private company - was set up from the very beginning to implement and monitor the project.