Serious debate on the future of effective e-government in the EU

It was a good day for the future prospects of e-government in the EU and it was definitely a fine day for Malta's drive towards e-government. Last Thursday Malta was placed at the top in the list of e-government services in EU countries in a benchmarking report published during the 5th Ministerial eGovernmennt Conference held in Malmö, Sweden.

The eighth benchmarking report on e-government, compiled by a group of private consulting companies led by Capgemini on behalf of the European Commission, put Malta in very good light in terms of availability and sophistication of these services.

Malta, together with Austria, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Slovenia was placed in the group of the leading nations on the full online availability of the basic 20 services, with the top four countries (including Malta) having the same score. With regard to the online sophistication of the 20 basic services, the leading six nations are Malta, Portugal, Sweden, Austria, Slovenia and Estonia. Malta, Finland, and UK appear regularly in the top user experience indicators.

The top performers for the availability of services benchmark are a group of four countries: Estonia, Ireland, Malta and Luxembourg. In these countries, a strong proactive policy for e-procurement has succeeded in aligning availability and visibility for most contracting authorities. Malta was placed very well in this regard.

i-Tech spoke to Dinand Tinholt, programme manager for e-government benchmark at Capgemini, about Malta's outstanding performance in the report. He said other large EU countries have something to learn from Malta's e-government and how it manages to provide the services on a national scale in a small country. Size is an advantage for Malta in this matter, he conceded.

At EU level, these results compared to the previous report of 2007 show increased full on-line availability (71 per cent compared to 59 per cent in '07) and sophistication (83 per cent compared to 76 per cent in '07). Personalised services are gaining ground and becoming more commonplace across Europe. User empowering technologies are pushing governments to redesign their e-government services.

Thursday could have been an even better day for Malta as Malta's two finalists in the eGovernment Awards failed to get the top prize in the evening's announcement. The Maltese finalists were the eApplications service of the Malta Environmental and Planning Authority and the Inland Revenue Service Online. Both set up a stand together with the other 52 finalists in the exhibition hall at the e-government conference centre.

The winners of the 2009 European eGovernment Awards, organised by the European Commission, were selected for their innovative contribution to increasing the efficiency of public services through the use of digital technologies. In their respective categories the winners are: the European Order for Payment Application (Austria and Germany), Genvej (Denmark), the Italian Public Administration eMarketplace (Italy) and Licensing of Hunters via the "Multibanco" ATM Network (Portugal). The public prize following an online vote went to SMS Information System - SMS INFO (Turkey).

The eGovernment conference held several parallel sessions from both public and private entities.

Don Tapscott, the Canadian-born international authority on business strategy and the digital media, warned that governments should embrace Web 2.0 technologies rather than ban them. The concept of a website belongs to the old thinking of internet, or Web 1.0, he insisted. He warned that the new digital generation of youngsters will not settle for voting once every few years and governments need to engage them through social media such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube.

These "digital natives" will bring great social and economic changes around the world, and he mentioned Iran's youth challenging the theocratic establishment through these Web 2.0 services as an example.

Those who still have doubts about the role of technology in our lives should note that there are more transistors than grains of rice the world, according to Larry Hirst, the chairman of IBM Europe, Middle East and Africa. He also referred to IBM's involvement in the building of the smartgrid for utilities in Malta.

The feeling at the conference was that we are now past the discussion on the nature of technology and we have started to think seriously how it will affect our social, economic, financial and natural environment.

This message was delivered in the ministerial declaration approved unanimously by ministers from EU member states, applicant countries, candidate countries and the EFTA countries during the 5th Ministerial eGovernment Conference.

The declaration, with Malta's approval, sets the broad principles that will guide the EU in the provision of e-government services up to 2015. The priorities include the importance of designing services around users' needs and developed in collaboration with third parties and stakeholders; supporting mobility in the single market by seamless e-government services for the setting up and running of a business and for studying, working, residing and retiring anywhere in the EU; supporting the drive for efficiency and lower carbon footprint; and having the appropriate key enablers, legal and technical frameworks in place. When implemented, these should propel the EU as a global leader in e-government and create the so-called "eUnion".

Specific technologies were not mentioned by name in this declaration, though there is a reference to Open Source, the software that is developed and made available free of charge, confirming the support for this model within the EU. However, EU leaders could not but admit there are challenges in certain areas, like e-voting and e-ID, where different members states have different views on these services.

Industry seems to have welcomed the ministerial declaration but being the manufacturer of the software and hardware used in e-government, it has its own set of priorities. DigitalEurope, representing 42 national digital technology associations, sees five technology enablers: ubiquitous broadband internet access (wired and mobile); interoperability (different systems being able to talk to each other); cloud computing (which is a cost-effective and efficient way to provide services and share data); business intelligence tools; and Web 2.0 (important for citizen interaction because people are hooked to such Web 2.0 services). E-skills of citizens and public officers are also very important.

Matthew Gatt, the chief executive officer of the Malta Information Technology Agency, chaired one of the parallel sessions of the conference that discussed the issue of interoperability. His main message was that the legal aspect must be granted the necessary importance.

Different technology systems can be made to talk to each other in some way or another, but different laws in different countries have to cater for this too.

This is the first in a series of articles reporting on the 5th Ministerial eGovernment Conference and e-government in Malta made possible with the support of MITA.