A European perspective towards online one-stop government: the eGOV project

Abstract

e-Government reflects current visions for public administrations towards modernization and reorganization. Therefore, online one-stop Government targets the improvement of customer-to-government interactions. It provides electronic public services of distinct public authorities to citizens and businesses in a customer-oriented manner from a single point of access. The customer-oriented approach towards online one-stop Government further offers online public services 24 h a day from anywhere in an easy-to-use and simple way according to the customers’ needs. Structuring public services around citizens’ life-episodes and businesses’ specific situations represents such an approach. To speed up innovative developments in the field, the European Commission has provided substantial funding. eGOV is such an EC-funded project that aims at developing an integrated platform for realizing online one-stop Government. Key innovations of eGOV are: a global access point to enter different governmental services and information at distinct levels of public administration and with different devices; and the development of online one-stop Government process models. To develop an integrated one-stop Government platform, different requirements have to be fulfilled. Here, an holistic development approach provides an important guideline to address different aspects impacting advanced one-stop Government systems. With such an holistic approach, despite the technical developments, integrated process models for online public service delivery are put forward. Furthermore, the legal aspects framing one-stop Government developments and the social impacts of such developments for different user groups are investigated.