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Published: 30 November -0001
All Western European governments are increasing their spending in IT services, though the levels of online service sophistication and citizen readiness varies from country to country, according to a report from market advisory firm IDC, which has been tracking the progress of e-government over the past four years, using the official EU benchmarks. As the deadlines for the e-Europe Action Plan near, many European countries have increased their efforts to bring new services online. In fact, many of the Western European countries have a large number of highly transactional services available to their citizens. In last year's study, Denmark led other European countries in terms of the sophistication of services available online from public authorities as well as the readiness of the population to embrace e-government. This year Denmark and Sweden are neck and neck, with Italy close in sophistication but far behind in readiness.
Switzerland continues to lag behind the other European countries in terms of the sophistication of the services that have been made available online for constituents. Part of the reason for this is likely to be found in the decentralized structure of the government sector in Switzerland.
The greatest improvements to e-government, i.e. higher sophistication in the total number of services provided to citizens and businesses between 2003 and 2004, were made in Norway, Sweden and the UK, followed by the Netherlands, Austria and Portugal.
IDC estimates that in 2003, around 12 per cent of all spending on IT services in the government sector in Western Europe was related to e-government projects.
Autor: John Tilak
Quelle: DMeurope, 08.02.2005
