Atos helps to reinvigorate the local economy in Belgium with NMBS/SNCB during the Covid-19 pandemic
The Belgian Government, together with NMBS/SNCB, took social-economic measures to ensure that Belgians would be able to travel throughout Belgium for their “staycation” during and post the Covid-19 pandemic. Helping them to plan holidays, meanwhile supporting the local economy.
The challenge
The Belgian Government was looking at options to prepare for a reopening of the local economy post the Covid-19 crisis. Due to lockdown restrictions and air travel being discouraged, the Government wanted to encourage ‘staycations’ during the holidays across Belgium.
The Belgian Government therefore decided to distribute 12 free train tickets per person to all Belgian residents.
The solution
Atos provides a stable, secure and scalable solution which offers access to the Tourism Pass portal for Belgian citizens & residents, to get hold of their free train tickets, helpdesk employees and printing partner employees. The solution provides reports for insights into the process to NMBS.
The solution managed 1,000,000 ticket requests in the first weeks of deployment, reaching 10% of the Belgian population. This was down to the flexibility and asynchronous approach to the solution design to allow for such large demand and to handle requests separately from the user interaction that ensures peak loads are decoupled from other resources and third-party integrations.
The portal is monitored online, and adjustments can be configured to guarantee the best performance, and extra care was taken for the security considerations, that includes (internal) audits by security officers and our ethical hackers.
Business benefit
- Increased travel by train
- Improved customer/passenger experience
- Improved citizen trust
- Supported business resilience
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Glen Deserrano
Client Executive Partner