EU launches five year eGov Action Plan

The eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015 was launched at the "Lift-Off Towards Open Government” conference, by Neelie Kroes, Commission Vice President for the Digital Agenda.

 

Kroes said the Plan would “help public authorities to use information & communication technologies to offer better services at lower cost, while making life easier and better for individual citizens and businesses in terms of improved access to public services."

 

Specific goals for the new plan over the next five years include the increased use of eGovernment services to 50% of EU citizens and 80% of EU businesses, and ensuring the availability of key public services online.

 

The previous Plan, i2010 eGovernment Action Plan: Accelerating eGovernment in Europe for the Benefit of All, had broader aims including ensuring eGovernment at a national level does not lead to new barriers on the single market due to fragmentation and lack of interoperability, and the cooperation of stakeholders in the EU in designing and delivering eGovernment.

 

The i2010 Plan spawned a number of initiatives, including the STORK, PEPPOL, and SPOCS pilot projects, which the EU claims “harness information and communication technologies (ICT) to develop concrete solutions for EU-wide services which meet the needs of citizens and businesses”.

 

According to the outline laid out by Kroes and the EU, the new eGovernment Action Plan proposes concrete measures that should enable so that by 2015 it should - for instance - become much more convenient to "apply for and access social security and health benefits, or receive pension rights from one EU country to another".

 

EU Commissioner in charge of the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes said that promoting e-government can help boost Europe's competitiveness and allow public authorities to offer improved services more cost-effectively at a time of budget constraints.

 

“We are all aware that the economic crisis and demographic changes are forcing Governments to rethink how they operate. At the same time hundreds of millions of citizens not only depend on public services, they also want a new and more interactive relationship with their governments,” she said. 

 

“These dual pressures make it inevitable that governments must make smarter use of ICT; the real question is how and when. Our job is to make it known that smarter spending does not have to mean getting less. ICT can actually transform and improve public services while materially reducing government debt burdens. The role of the Digital Agenda is to support this holistically by getting rid of barriers to successful eGovernment.”

 

Key to all this is co-ordination, argued Kroes, or the potential of eGovernment will remain unrealised and subject to accusations of hype. “The untapped potential may start causing problems,” she cautioned. “Uncoordinated development of eProcurement platforms and e-identity systems may be creating a pointless barrier to the Digital Single Market. Business wanting to trade, to register for licences and permits, to pay VAT or establish branches across borders may experience...compliance problems and incompatible national systems. 

 

“Citizens seeking to study, receive healthcare services, reside or retire in another country may find duplicated digital systems more difficult to negotiate than paper ones. This is absurd. Both citizens and businesses must be able to benefit from on-line services everywhere in Europe regardless of their country of origin.

 

“Secondly, if administrations are reluctant to embrace emerging technologies they risk alienating the younger generations – the digital natives,” she added. “That is neither good for democracy nor for innovation in government. If public administrations fail to keep up with the times, they risk irrelevance or even worse. They risk becoming an obstacle for competitiveness and civic engagement. They will be missing out on a massive pool of skills and talent that can help them improve the way services are designed and delivered.”

 

But there is every opportunity to ensure that this 'second chance' at eGovernment can work, argued Kroes. "This second generation of eGovernment services and application is Europe’s best chance to create a socially, economically and environmentally sustainable public sector," she said.

 

"Take the example of public sector information – possibly a €30 billion market in Europe. I have said it before, and I say it again: yes to open data. I want to see more citizens and businesses making use of more open – machine readable – data. By involving third parties we can both improve services and be more transparent."