The conference focussed on the10th e-Government Benchmark Report, which is published since 2001; this year's survey looked at the situation in the EU 27 member states, plus Croatia, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey. For the first time, the report revealed both the supply side and the demand side of e-Government, including a survey of e-Government users. The report also looked at usability, transparency and key enablers. Finally the report assessed online services related to three major life events: losing/finding a job, setting up a company and studying.
Valuable statistics
Almost half of EU citizens (46%) now go online to look for a job, use the public library, file a tax return, register a birth, apply for a passport or use other e-Government services. 80% say online public services save them time, 76% like the flexibility and 62% say they save money. But these users are more satisfied with online banking (8.5 satisfaction rating on a scale of 0 to 10), and online shopping (7.6) than with public services online (6.5).
European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes responded to the results saying: "These are promising trends for e-Government in Europe. However, when users are more satisfied with online banking than online public services, it shows that public administrations must do better at designing e-Government services around users' needs”.
The Commissioner acknowledged that the EU and the member states have to do more to make e-Government work across the borders.
Reference: European Commission, Press release –IP/13/466; Brussels, 28 May 2013
The Digital Agenda for Europe: key findings
The Digital Agenda for Europe aims to increase the use of e-Government services to 50% of EU citizens by 2015. The e-Government Benchmark 2012 report surveyed 28 000 internet users across 32 countries.
Among the publication’s key findings were the following issues:
- The most popular services were declaring income taxes (73% of users declare taxes online), moving or changing address (57%) and enrolling in higher education and/or applying for student grant (56%).
- While 54% of those surveyed still prefer face-to face contact or other traditional channels, at least 30% of them indicated they could also be regular e-Government users if more relevant services were provided.
- 47% of e-Government users got all they wanted from online services, 46% only partially received what they were looking for.
The report also signals that improvements are needed to online services for important life events like losing or finding a job, setting up a company and registering for studying.
For people living in their own country, on average more than half of the administrative steps related to these key life events can be carried out online. Websites give information about the remaining steps. However, more transparency and interaction with users is needed to better empower citizens.
The picture is less bright for the almost 2 million people who move or commute between EU Member States. While the majority of the EU member states provide some information about studying or starting a company from abroad, online registration is less common. Only 9 countries allow citizens from another EU member state to register to study online, and only 17 countries allow them to take some steps to start a company in this way.
Commission’s initiatives
Since December 2010 the Commission and Member States' public authorities have been working to expand and improve the services which they offer via the internet. The e-Government Action Plan contains forty specific measures to enable citizens and businesses to use online facilities (see IP/10/1718). The Commission is now assessing progress and will report back by the end of 2013.
The Commission is committed to supporting the development and use of online public services which work across borders. In particular, the Commission has helped to fund Large Scale Pilot Projects which link up different national online systems and provide the building blocks for European cross-border public services. Work is on-going in e-ID (STORK 2.0), e-Health (epSOS) and e-Justice (e-CODEX). Earlier pilots for e-Business (SPOCS) and e-Procurement (PEPPOL, now Open PEPPOL ASBL) have successfully completed their work.
The Commission aims to continue supporting interconnected digital service infrastructures like e-Identification and e-Procurement over 2014-2020 from the new Connecting Europe Facility.
In parallel, draft EU rules on e-Identification, authentication and signatures proposed last year (IP/12/558) aim to ensure people and businesses can use their own national electronic ID to access public services in other EU countries. They will also create an internal market for e-Signatures and related online trust services
Useful links for further reading:
- The full report and country analysis;
- Build Connect Grow magazine on Large Scale Pilots;
- @EU_e-Gov;
- Digital Agenda website;
- http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-466_en.htm
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Eugene Eteris
Quelle/Source: The Baltic Course, 03.06.2013
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