A five-year e-Government Action Plan has just been presented by the European Commission to deliver innovative online public services to citizens and businesses and increase the take-up of these services across Europe.
The Commission said it sets out concrete actions and priorities to make access to public services more efficient and cost effective. The availability of online delivery of basic services like company registration and tax filing has so far been a success, going up from 21 per cent in 2000 to 71 per cent in 2009 in EU27. But take-up does not match this trend, with only 42 per cent of the EU population using online public services in the past year. The Commission said it is committed to supporting member states in developing e-Government services based on users’ needs.
Only 42 per cent of the EU population used online public services in the past year. The services themselves are rarely, or not easily, available across borders. The plan therefore aims to increase the take-up of online public services to 50 per cent of EU citizens by 2015 and to make available online a number of cross border services.
In a true digital single market, people should all be able to apply online to study, reside or retire anywhere in the EU. Information and communications technologies (ICT) are meant to make our lives easier, yet in this respect it is still at times easier to go down the paper route than use the internet. The plan foresees actions to strengthen personal mobility in the single market thanks to digital services.
This action plan also aims to make public administrations more transparent for the benefit of the citizen. One objective is to provide citizens with electronic access to their personal data, in strict compliance with data protection requirements, and to enable them to follow online each step of the administrative procedure as well as to complete an administrative task online anywhere in the EU.
It will also give citizens a greater say on how online public services are designed, produced and delivered. This also means that all kinds of public data such as geographical, meteorological, legal, financial, economic and traffic information should be made available for innovative products such as geo-information systems for cars, online weather forecasts, or travel information applications which could, for instance, be downloaded on smart phones or other electronic devices.
The action plan calls for innovative services to be accessible not only through the internet, but also through TV, mobile phones or other electronic devices.
The Commission said it will work with member states to develop the electronic means to support citizens’ initiatives. By the end of 2011, member states are due to agree on a number of key cross-border public services to be rolled out between 2012 and 2015 and identify how they could be introduced.
The e-Government Action Plan is committed to meeting the expectations of “digital natives”, the young people who have been online since they were small children, use the internet more frequently and often have more digital know-how than previous generations. A key priority for students is to be able to enrol online for any European school or university from any member state.
The action plan aims to ease and secure the transfer of pension rights across the EU.
The e-Government Action Plan aims at ensuring, together with member states, that services are designed around the needs of users and that access to public services is available through various channels. These include the internet, TV, telephone, mobile devices and intermediaries (which can be helpful to those who either do not have an internet connection or do not have the skills to access these services), as well as websites accessible to persons with disabilities.
Since e-government services are of great importance for business, the aim of the Action Plan is that 80 per cent of enterprises will be using online public services by 2015. E-government aims to ensure that businesses and especially small and medium sized enterprises spend less time on administrative procedures and gain new business opportunities. Businesses should be able to sell goods and services to public administrations all across the EU, through easy electronic public procurement. By 2015, a number of key cross-border services, such as e-tendering, should be available online and enable entrepreneurs to set up and run a business anywhere in Europe more quickly and easily, independent of their original location.
ICTs can help the public sector to develop innovative ways of delivering its services to citizens more effectively and at lower costs. The action plan will encourage the exchange of best practices between member states. For its part, the Commission will implement an ambitious eCommission Action Plan for 2011-2015, including full electronic procurement, a public sector information strategy and a transparency policy.
Electronic identification (e-ID) technologies and authentication services are essential for the security of electronic transactions (in both the public and private sectors). Today the most common way to authenticate such transactions is by means of passwords, but more secure solutions for, protecting privacy are increasingly needed. Europe needs better administrative cooperation to develop and deploy cross-border public online services, including practical e-identification and e-authentication solutions. The Action Plan will contribute towards the mutual recognition and acceptance of e-ID, allowing citizens and businesses to identify themselves electronically throughout Europe.
In terms of green policies, Europe’s global leadership to tackle climate change has paved the way forward with an ambitious energy and climate change policy that sets out to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 percent by 2020.
E-Government helps to reduce the carbon footprint of administrations in member states, for example by implementing electronic archiving or using videoconferences instead of travelling. The Commission, on its side, will conduct a study in 2012 on the potential of e-government to further reduce the carbon footprint of governments.
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/index_en.htm