The strategy and the progress made on E-government services in the EU

Abstract

The need for the provision of a new generation of e-Government services able to meet the requirements of modern technological societies of the member states of the European Union (EU) was quite evident since the end of the previous century. To this end, the EU urge its members to actively participate on its 2020 strategic plan for the “provision of a new generation of e-Government services” [1]. The European Union’s goal is to incentivise the participating states to further develop and evolve the current e-Government services in order to promote interoperability and better e-relations between states with the introduction of e-Signatures and e-Identification (STORK 2.0 project). Even though Europe is trying to achieve an ideal by implementing eGovernment 2.0, a dipole has formed in the sense that Europe is pushing for the 2020 goals on the one end, and on the other end the countries with a high percentage of public sector corruption are prioritising e-services centered mainly on tax collection, at the expense of other objectives. In this paper, an effort is attempted to make an up-to-date review of the criteria and benchmarks used in evaluating e-government services worldwide. Also, an assessment is contacted on how the member states of the EU conform to the EU’s 2020 strategy.