The Birth Registration and Family Allowance (ALF) service provides parents in Austria the opportunity to receive family allowance without any further applications to fill out. Since the 1st of May 2015, parents only need to go to the Civil Registry Office once or the needed information is already send by the hospital. This data is then shared among relevant authorities in order to reduce the administrative burden for new parents in Austria.  

How does it work?

Through the ALF service, nine public services are integrated so that the parents have to visit only the Civil Registry Office and have to bring along no evidences except their personal identification (passport or personal ID card). In some cases (lager local authorities), registry offices have even subsidiaries in hospitals so that the parents can do the whole procedure in the hospital. This allows a proactive service provisioning (no-stop-service).

The data of the citizens are stored in a couple of interacting registers, such as, central civil register (ZPR), central citizenship register (ZSR) and central residence register (ZMR). With the permission of the citizens, governmental bodies are allowed to use their data for other birth related public services. Through the ALF process the social security card (e-Card) for the new-born will also be automatically send to the parents. The Civil Registry Office sends the parents' and child's data to the social insurance and tax authority and these agencies deliver their respective services to the parents automatically. This simplifies procedures immensely and reduces the administrative burden for parents.

What are the benefits and challenges?

In the past, parents had to go to six different public agencies to carry out their duties and to be entitled to receive family allowance. Through the implementation of the once-only principle, parents are getting their family allowance faster and to their convenience. The ALF service uses once-only as citizens have to share their data only once. This data is then re-used and shared among public administrations in order to provide more services to parents.

For further information visit: https://www.bmfj.gv.at/familie/finanzielle-unterstuetzungen/familienbeihilfe0/antrag-familienbeihilfe.html