Introduction
The public sector plays a major role in Europe's social and economic development. It provides for welfare to citizens, socio-economic cohesion and a competitive market environment. However, Europe's public sector is at crossroads today, facing economic and social challenges, institutional changes and the profound impact of new technologies.
Public administrations are challenged to improve efficiency, productivity and the quality of their services. All these challenges, however, have to be met with equal or even lower budgets.
The public sector is challenged to play a major role in the Lisbon strategy for economic, social and environment renewal and in particular to contribute to boosting economic growth and innovation where Europe is lagging behind the U.S.
Information and communication technologies (ICT) can help the public sector to deal with these challenges. However, ICT alone is not sufficient. The full benefits from ICT solutions are only obtained when the administrations are properly organised and when they have adequately skilled staff. This is what eGovernment is about.
eGovernment is the use of ICT in public administrations, combined with organisational change and new skills in order to improve public services, to increase the participation of the citizen at the democratic process and to strengthen support to public policies.
eGovernment is not a goal in itself. It is a tool for public sector reform with three objectives:
- First, a public sector that is open and transparent. Administrations should be more understandable and accountable to the citizens.
- Second, administrations that are at the service for all. A user-centred public sector will exclude no one from its services and respect everyone as an individual, by providing personalised services.
- Third, a productive public sector that is capable of delivering high value for taxpayers' money.
Open government - reinforcing democracy
Information and communication technology and especially the Internet is a great tool to make governments more open and transparent. It empowers citizens.
eGovernment can make governments more relevant to citizens by increasing participation and involvement in decision-making. It can help to restore ownership: the government is of the people.
eGovernment is also the way to increase accountability. ICT makes it possible to follow all administrative steps. To see where decisions are prepared and made. Know who is responsible.
Inclusive and personalised services
The public sector should provide all-inclusive services. Governments cannot choose their clients; they have to serve all. Whether the citizens are IT-literate or not, living in cities or in remote rural areas, having special needs due to disability or not.
ICT indeed makes information better accessible. But not everyone wants to use a PC or can afford one.
Therefore public services should also be provided on all platforms PCs, television, mobile terminal and on public access points. We need a multi-platform approach. The eEurope 2005 Action Plan calls upon all parties to make this a reality.
eGovernment is also well suited to provide personalised services by bringing information together from various sources.
Personalisation is a great time saver. But it requires common approaches to safeguard privacy and needs interoperability between administrations.
An example of citizen-focus is the citizens-portal of the Austrian government. Here citizens can get information about many public services. They can use a smart card or even a mobile phone to pay for such services, where needed.
Value for taxpayers' money
Productivity matters. In the public sector as much as anywhere else in the economy. Productivity growth is the only sustainable source of increase in real incomes and welfare. A more productive public sector allows reduction of public deficits and makes better use of public finance, through higher efficiency, which is especially important in these times of tight public budgets.
It is more difficult to measure productivity in the public sector, but the same logic applies as in the private sector. Namely, higher efficiency means more or better output for a given spending.
ICT is a powerful enabler for productivity growth. The key condition, however, is that investment in ICT is combined with investment in re-organisation of public administrations and improvement of skills of civil servants.
A more productive public sector will also benefit the private sector and make companies more competitive. By eGovernment we can cut red tape.
Increased productivity also means more time for personal contact, less standing in line, less time in front of the screen.
A few examples of increased productivity and efficiency are:
- The national public procurement agency in Denmark has doubled its productivity and completely eliminated complaints, through electronic tendering.
- The Romanian national procurement system reports savings of 20%.
- The Swedish Virtual Customs Office processes 90% of all declarations electronically and deals through automated clearance for 70% of the customs declarations within 3 minutes.
eGovernment responds to many longer-term challenges that affect Europe.
But there are still barriers. The most difficult are not in the technology, but in mindsets and in the rigidity of administrations.
What is needed is a change in the way we think and the way we work. Putting the citizen first and creating a culture of service will, in many instances, mean reforming the public sector.
We need practical groundwork, start small, learn from experience and scale up fast.
All European countries have been developing eGovernment plans and strategies over the past few years. Progress has been made in all countries in bringing public services online, with average online availability growing from 45% to 60% from October 2001 to October 2002. Several European countries are in the top league of eGovernment world wide.
At this stage differences between countries are perhaps less important than growth rates and strategic commitment to modernising public administrations, which can result in rapid progress over the coming years.
This is clearly also the approach Deutschland Online, for strategic cooperation in eGovernment at all levels of administration, and Bund Online 2005, the eGovernment initiative of the German Federal Government to put online all services suitable for the Internet by the year 2005.
Likewise leadership and commitment to eGovernment is evident here in the Land Nord-Rhein Westfalen. You have strategic plans for the Land and concrete progress in a wide range of public service areas, from administrative services to education and health.
Let me also mention that as one of the many German eGovernment activities, the “Bremer Online Services” has recently received international recognition. It won this summer the eEurope award for eGovernment-2003 in the category “the role of eGovernment for European competitiveness”.
We are observing the breakthrough of pan-European services. Today several pan-European services are already online, even if in continuous evolution.
One is a direct service to European citizens as a one-stop job mobility portal for European-wide job-search, already known as EURES, which is combined with the PLOTEUS training opportunities databases.
Another is the SOLVIT service which tackles the hurdle of citizens in dealing with administrative obstacles in cross-border procedures.
The EU legislative framework does not, by itself, ensure that people benefit fully from their rights and opportunities in the Internal Market. It is also necessary to respond to citizens' concerns about their rights by providing free advice and problem solving. This is a new type of pan-European service.
From a commercial perspective eGovernment is already a sizeable market. In the EU in 2002 about € 30 billion was spent on the ICT part of public administrations, that is, on administrative services only, excluding health, defence, education, etc.
However, ICT spending is only a fraction of the total spending on eGovernment as there is a significant accompanying investment in organisation and training. Experience from the business world tells us that such investment in organisational capital can be five to ten times as much as the ICT investment.
The way forward
Understandably then, the European Commission has taken a strong interest in eGovernment for the modernisation of the public sector.
eGovernment is one of the pillars of our eEurope information society action plan. This plan represents the contribution from an information society perspective to the Lisbon strategy.
Overcoming barriers between government departments and internal resistance requires strong political leadership and commitment. eGovernment cannot be led by the IT department. It has to be the highest level, Prime Ministers, Ministers, Mayors who commit themselves and lead by example.
The July eGovernment conference, which was part of the eEurope 2005 Action Plan, and its Ministerial Declaration demonstrated widespread interest in making eGovernment a reality in Europe, including increased exchange of experiences and co-operation at European level.
As a follow-up, the European Commission has recently adopted a comprehensive policy and roadmap for eGovernment. It gives an analysis of the role of eGovernment, identifies key issues for a full-scale implementation and gives a roadmap of actions. Some of these issues include:
Firstly, ensuring inclusive and widespread access to the Internet so public services are accessible for all. We should invest in multi-platform access, education, and implementing Web Accessibility Guidelines. We also need to achieve widespread availability of faster Internet, that is, broadband, so that citizens can be served with more interactive and effective public services.
Secondly, safeguarding trust and confidence in online interaction with governments. Privacy of data, authentication, and identity management are primary issues where no public service should ever fail.
The tragic September 11 events as well as cyber-attacks have lifted the importance of the continuity and dependability of public services to the top of the political agenda. Personal data protection, network and information security, the fight against cybercrime and dependability are core policy issues within the EU for which a comprehensive policy has been developed which should now be applied to public services as well. Identity management is one of the issues to be tackled with priority.
Thirdly, making electronic public procurement easier. This is clearly an area where large gains can be achieved. We are considering legislative and non-legislative measures required for eliminating obstacles to cross-border electronic public procurement and ensuring interoperability of electronic procurements systems, in the form of an Action Plan for e-procurement.
Fourth, progressing in the roll-out of pan-European services. There are already some services in place such as Europe-wide job search and access to educational information. But we want to take pan-European services a step further, to help establishing true European Citizenship and generate more benefits from the Internal Market. This implies integrating the pan-European dimension in national eGovernment strategies.
There are further issues, such as interworking of administrations at all levels for one-stop personalised services. For this we need interoperable technical platforms and government processes that span the boundaries of organisations and the borders of countries.
Some of this infrastructure for eGovernment is already in place but more needs to be done. Interoperability guidance such as provided by the German SAGA specifications is a key building block. An interoperability framework for pan-European services, part of eEurope 2005, is also going to be made available.
Finally, we need to know better what eGovernment delivers. Therefore, we will need to further investigate the economics of eGovernment and develop benefits-oriented approaches to benchmarking.
The actions to address these issues include exchange of good practices, support from European Union R&D, piloting and implementation programmes, and above all the initiatives and action plans at national, regional and local level.
Conclusions
Minister, Ladies and gentlemen,
Already today eGovernment is proving that it can help public administrations to become more productive and offer personalised services for all, in an open and transparent way.
The benefits of eGovernment can go far beyond bringing services online, provided that public administrations adapt their organisations and acquire new skills. We need that eGovernment comes to full use, in order for the public sector to boost economic growth and innovation in Europe.
There are many barriers to overcome and sizeable investments will be needed. We need to achieve a change of mindset, towards a public service that puts the citizen at the centre. The public sector should be enabled to be an active contributor to economic and societal progress.
European projects such as the pan-European services in that sense can play a catalyst role.
Political leadership and commitment is essential, in order to keep the longer-term vision in mind, overcome obstacles and ensure concrete deliverables.
In this respect it is encouraging to see that DeutschlandOnline was recently launched with the support from the highest political levels.
Events like this congress are required to actively stimulate a permanent dialogue among the public and private sector actors and among the Member States in order to jointly realise the targets for eGovernment.
This afternoon and tomorrow, many views and visions will be presented but also best practices will be shown. They demonstrate that eGovernment is a powerful means to realise a world class modern public administrations for Europe in the 21st century.
Let me thank the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Labour for supporting this congress and let me wish to all participants a very fruitful event.
Thank you.
Quelle: European Commission
