IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

The European Commission has launched a pilot web portal to help citizens and businesses access information and services to help them carry out cross-border activities like moving to or establishing a subsidiary in another country. So far Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain and Sweden have submitted content to the trial service, although the commission expects all EU member states, as well as prospective new members and members of the wider European Economic Area, to contribute.

In an ironic parallel development, new European Commission-funded research shows that most EU administrations think that developing online services for business is an issue for individual states.

The survey, conducted by the eGovernment Observatory which was set up by the commission to find out which e-government services are considered essential at a European level, found that only 15 per cent of administrations considered interoperability between online services to be an important objective.

However, business is behind the project - more than 50 per cent of European businesses surveyed thought the usefulness of online services was determined by how well harmonised they were across states. Three times as many businesses preferred a single European portal to national portals for locating e-government services.

Quelle: Headstar