Do digital public services matter? A comparative study of the czech republic and the Republic of Kazakhstan

Abstract

Provision of quality public services has been in great concern of many governments for longer period of time. An interesting fact could be observed that, as to the demand and supply of digital public services, some developed European countries could lag behind some upper-middle-income countries. The paper explores differences in digital public services provision (supply side) and use (demand side) between the Czech Republic and Kazakhstan. A document analysis was done and a comparative study based on secondary data was elaborated. We can confirm that even a country from outside of the EU (Kazakhstan) can provide a better organized supply of digital services than an EU member state (Czech Republic) at least on the national level. According to the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) benchmarking, there are also significant discrepancies among national, regional and local services in the EU. The same phenomenon is also reported from transitional countries like Kazakhstan.