Ireland to roll out on-line civil registration service: The Irish government has revealed plans to modernise its Civil Registration Service, so that major "life events" can be registered on-line. Under the proposed new system, birth, death and marriage certificates will be produced electronically, and an on-line register for divorce, nullity of marriage and adoptions will be established. The on-line system will also make it possible for citizens to register a life event at any registrar's office around the country, as opposed to the current requirement to register in the district where the event occurred. "The introduction of new technology will transform the current paper-based services," said Minister for Social and Family Affairs Mary Coughlan, announcing the proposals. She added that the new services will be more customer-friendly and will reduce red tape. There are also plans to introduce an on-line search facility for genealogists and family researchers.
Eastern Europe is making strong e-gov progress: survey: Eastern Europe is overtaking the Western Europe in terms of e-government, according to a soon-to-be-released survey by e-Forum, an organisation supported by the European Commission. The findings of the "e-Forum Public Services Requirements Survey" are based on interviews with high-ranking officials from 15 EU Member States and six Eastern European countries. The study shows that there is a substantial gap between Northern and Southern Europe with regard to both e-government and the use of ICT in the public sector. Meanwhile, Eastern Europe has overtaken Southern, and in some instances Northern, Europe on many levels. Ninety percent of public sector staff in Eastern Europe have access to the Internet, compared to 81 percent of government workers in Northern Europe and 74 percent in the South. In addition, 88 percent of Eastern European government staff were aware of EU benchmarking of e-government services, compared to 63 percent in Southern Europe and 56 percent in the North. The survey will be officially launched at the e-Forum Summit, which takes place in Valencia, Spain, in September.
Malta ramps up m-government services: Malta is planning to roll out more mobile government (m-government) services, following the success of a recent initiative that saw 8,000 students receive their exam results via text message. Several m-government schemes have already been launched, including an SMS service that informs the employees of law courts when cases have been deferred and a service that reminds certain licence holders that their licences are due for renewal. A number of other mobile services are in the pipeline, such as a text message service that calls members of parliament to the House. Another scheme due to be announced shortly involves issuing an SMS notification to recipients of Social Security when a payment has been lodged to their bank account. It is understood that other mobile applications under development include services whereby incidents can be reported to the police and applications can be made for birth, marriage or death certificates. Citizens can register for m-government services on the government's main portal site, www.gov.mt.
EC aims to make emergency services more efficient: The European Commission has adopted a recommendation aimed at increasing the efficiency of emergency response services across the EU. The recommendation provides concrete guidelines for setting up systems that will enable the automatic transfer of location data to emergency services, for callers from both fixed-line and mobile telephones. Around 50 percent of all emergency calls to the EU-wide 112 emergency number are estimated to originate from mobile networks, and the Commission says the sharing of location data will help to overcome a number of problems commonly associated with such calls: It is thought that every year at least 1 million callers to 112 are unable to indicate their location, and valuable time is frequently lost due to the provision of inaccurate location information. Furthermore, the widespread use of mobile phones means that emergency services often receive multiple calls referring to the same incident. All of these problems can be addressed through the establishment of a system for automatically forwarding accurate location information to emergency service centres, said the Commission.
Finland to launch alternative electronic ID system: The government of Finland is to introduce an alternative ID system to its electronic ID cards, which have seen a poor level of take-up by citizens. Since launching in 2000, only around 16,000 of Finland's roughly 5 million citizens have purchased the Finnish Electronic ID (FINEID) card, which is required for identification purposes when accessing e-government services. The new system for on-line identification, due for implementation by early October, is being developed in collaboration with Finnish banks Nordea, OP Bank Group and Sampo. The government is hopeful that the new system will be more appealing to citizens, as cumbersome card-reading technology will not be needed in order to provide proof of identity. The system will use electronic identification codes embedded in credit cards issued by the banks as a means of identifying cardholders who wish to access government services over the Internet.
Quelle: electricnews.net
