Potential use of citizen accounts on e-government portals

Abstract

The European Commission has introduced various polices and regulations within the last decade to foster the growth of the European digital economy, increase collaboration and ensure better access for citizens to online services across Europe. Being part of the Digital Agenda for Europe 2020, EU initiatives such as the “eIDAS Regulation” and the “Once-Only Principle” should help to remove national barriers and enhance development of cross-border digital public services. The concept of citizen accounts enables citizens to get personalized services from their governments. Future possible uses include saving some of the frequently used formal documents that are required for government interactions online for a quick access on the citizen account. Selected government agencies could access these documents in case of an explicit consent of the citizen. Yet, the perspective of citizens on this topic involving highly sensitive documents and personal information as well as their concerns and expectations in the context of citizen accounts have barely been subject to research up to now. We question not only security related risks but also analyse privacy related risks such as lack of information about the further use of personal data and fear of central storage of personal data in government databases. Our analysis providing nationwide representative research results based on a large-scale empirical study, which was conducted in 2018 in German speaking countries, aims to provide some insights in order to support the planning of the future initiatives and design of citizen accounts in the European countries.