The European Commission has presented its new agenda for improving the efficiency of state administrations across the continent. The latest plans for delivering interoperable e-government services to businesses and citizens were discussed on 18 February 2005 at a conference in Brussels. It dealt with a range of e-government related issues, including cross border public procurement schemes, reducing the use of paper documents in international trade and access to public services.
Commission vice president Günter Verheugen said that e-government is key to the EU's Lisbon agenda, which aims to drive the European economy forward.
"Businesses and citizens are the core target groups for the new EU e-government services. In order to revitalise the Lisbon agenda we need modern public services that eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy," he said.
The commission heralded work on its Your Europe portal, which it says is the first step towards a new generation of e-government services. The portal was scheduled to become fully available at the end of 2004 after suffering a series of delays during a two year pilot stage.
Quelle: KableNET , 18.02.2005
