The latest EC report shows a narrowing gap between leaders and followers in the use of information and communication technologies in public administrations.
As Europe’s digital agenda rises to the forefront of policy priorities, an important part includes the diffusion of development of digital services and processes in public administrations. The latest eGovernment Benchmark report provides an insight into the progress made, and the progress which remains, for EU countries and their European peers such as Switzerland in terms of the penetration of online services and the degree of digitisation of public sector processes.
The European average on both measures of penetration and digitisation importantly show progress as compared to last year, with the Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) standing out on both measures. Denmark, Spain and France perform well on penetration measures, while Austria and Portugal excel in digitisation. In terms of more granular benchmarks, such as user-centricity, transparency, cross-border mobility, and use of key enablers (e.g. electronic identification and authentic sources facilitating provision of e-services), the leaders are Malta, Estonia and Austria, with other Baltic and Nordic countries close behind.
The report’s country fact-sheets show Switzerland performing below-average as compared to its European peers across most of the above metrics. Despite not being an EU member it nevertheless performs remarkably well in services for cross-border mobility for business, due to the introduction of eDocuments. On more specific measures such as eGovernment services for business start-up Switzerland has become a leader on user-centricity. For many other services such as job searches, moving, or vehicle-related processes, Switzerland lags far behind its peers.
The annually published measures allow countries to focus their efforts on improving performance in their services, and to consider policies related to innovation procurement in order to make progress. In the education field, one of the priorities for the next years will be the roll out of a European Student Card to facilitate access to services while being mobile. The benchmarking exercise also helps provide insights into the factors that might influence innovation and the key characteristics that affect eGovernment performances.