Municipality of Comiso: Integrated Water Service Digitised

New digital system for water bill payments and tax relief for using email and self-reading of meters. These and other innovations with the integrated system. “I only pay for what I consume is the novelty of this system.”.

Statements from the Councillor for Taxes, Manuela Pepi. “It is online the new portal which facilitates the payment of the water bill, but which will be extended to any local tax, such as TARI – explains Councillor Pepi. This is comiso.k-portal.it, created and managed by Sikuel, which will offer, with a simple click, the possibility to pay from home, using a mobile phone or PC. We approved this system in council – Pepi continues – to implement a national law that requires municipalities to activate this method of payment for local taxes. In fact, apart from the ease of use, invoice reductions are also foreseen.

The first important thing to highlight is that municipalities will be able to save on postal costs for sending bills, and these savings will be passed on to users, i.e. citizens, in the form of discounts. Anyone who registers on the portal and requests billing by email will receive a €5.00 deduction on their first billable and €2.00 with meter self-reading. It will be a direct communication between the citizen and the relevant offices, with the utmost protection of each user's private data. Furthermore, an overview of one's local tax contribution status is also planned. Obviously – the councillor continues – meter readings taken by the meter reader will still be carried out while the percentage of “digital” users is sufficiently high.

But the most important new feature is that you will only pay for actual consumption if you proceed with digital communication and self-reading.
Finally – concludes Councillor Pepi – we have also thought of citizens less accustomed to using digital technology, ensuring that, through CAF centres, patronages and accountants, a simple authorisation is enough to make payments online and request bills via email.