The European Commission has revealed a new action plan under the Digital Agenda to move governments to increase services to citizens online by 50pc and to businesses by 80pc.
Another facet of the plan is to ensure that key public services are available online for entrepreneurs to allow them to set up and run a business from anywhere within the EU independently of their original location.
The European E-government Action Plan is aimed at transitioning a new generation of open, flexible and seamless e-government services at local, regional, national and EU levels.
The plan aims to make services work as well in other EU Member States as they do at home and to open the way to allowing users to actively shape the online public services that suit their needs best.
Cross-border services
National governments will have to play a central role in implementing the Action Plan while the Commission will focus on cross-border services, including interoperability, e-signatures and e-identification.
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.
“This E-government Action Plan will help public authorities to use information and 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,” Kroes said.
For the past two years, Silicon Republic has run a campaign to highlight the imperative of creating the digital infrastructure and services upon which the success of our economy depends.
The website for Digital 21 provides a forum for all those interested in accelerating the development of Ireland’s Digital Economy.
