European eGovernment Research Articles

E-Administration in Polish Voivodeships Against the Background of Europe

Goal– the aim of the article is to assess the level of development of e-government services in Europe, with particular emphasis on the level of use of these services in Polish voivodships. Research methodology– the Perkal method and the analysis of the EGDI index were used to achieve the research objective. The study was conducted on the basis of the available data from the United Nations E-Government Survey and the Central Statistical Office in the area of public e-government services for citizens. Score/results – the analysis of the United Nations E-Government Survey reports showed that, since 2003, Denmark, Finland and Sweden have been occupying the highest place in the development of e-government in Europe and in the world. The research results showed that the level of the EGDI indicator increases over the years 2003–2022. The author’s own research on the use of e-government services in Polish voivodeships showed that over the years 2014–2022 the level of use of e-government services by citizens increased. Mazowieckie, Dolnośląskie and Pomorskie Voivodships are characterized by the highest level of use of e-administration services, while the Świętokrzyskie, Podkarpackie and Lubelskie Voivodships are among the voivodships with the lowest use of these services. Originality/value – the introduction of various e-government solutions is becoming a very clear trend. Regional differences, on the other hand, result from the level of the state development in individual countries. The article showed that the use of e-government services in Poland by citizens is increasing, but it is still at an unsatisfactory level. Noticeable disproportions can be seen in individual voivodeships of Poland. Polish society does not take full advantage of the facilities offered by public administration, therefore it seems necessary in this situation to take decisive action that could encourage the society to use e-services. In order to enhance the increase in the use of these services, each voivodeship should develop separate actions that will contribute to greater interest of citizens in e-government services, and consequently to their use. The carried out analyses may therefore be a contribution to further in‑‑ depth research, because the issues of electronic administration are very up‑‑ to-date and knowledge in this field requires constant updating.

E-Government in Europe. A Machine Learning Approach

e-Government in Europe. A Machine Learning Approach

Communicative technologies in the formation of political mediariality during conflicts

In the modern political world, information and technological principles are important, which form the media space – factors of manipulation, fake news, support for political actors. The media, in the XXI century, not only manipulate society and create confrontational moments, but also in their activities mix politics, commercial advertising, criminal aspects. The modern product of media culture is media reality, which forms new boundaries of the socio-cultural space of each state. Media reality is one of the elements of communication technologies that influence society, but also individual state institutions. Focusing on important political problems and issues in the modern world is reduced to public (mass) attention, coverage of incorrect (fake) information about the opponent – and so is the process of manipulation of citizens and the creation of conflicts in society. All this is accompanied by an imbalance of communication interaction and information noise, which leads to distortion of the information space of the state, new hybrid wars, information disputes, fake news. In Ukraine, there are difficulties in maintaining the media space in the international arena, because we have a number of open and latent conflicts. Accordingly, the media space – connections and interaction, as well as gaps and opposition between agents in the political arena. Ukraine should understand that it is necessary to develop and integrate into new communication technologies. This will give an opportunity not only to orient oneself politically and to understand the advantages and disadvantages of one or another political force, but also to form one’s own integral and effective state interest and values. The rapid process of information and communication technologies in all spheres of society has caused global transformations, opened new opportunities for the information space. A popular model of integrated political technologies in Europe is social management in a real communication network. For example, Estonia has a progressive model of e-government in Europe, which means that communication technologies and a minimized level of conflict factors function accordingly in the country.

Rozwój usług elektronicznej administracji publicznej w Polsce na tle Unii Europejskiej

The information society, which was born along with the development of information and communication technologies, is a commonly used term in everyday life, both personally and professionally. The aim of the article is to evaluate the level of development of e-government services in the European Union countries, with particular emphasis on Poland. For the purpose of the research, the Perkal and Ward methods were used and the following indicators: DESI and EGDI. The available data from Eurostat and the Central Statistical Office in the area of public e-government services for citizens were analyzed. The article also refers to the development priorities of Poland and the European Union in terms of e-administration development. E-administration is one of the most important areas determining the essence of the information society. Rapid progress is observed in the development of e-government in Europe. However, it is not even, and there are significant inequalities in the access and use of ICT in individual Member States. Societies strive for quick and convenient handling of civil matters via the Internet. Electronic public administration in EU countries is undergoing a digital transformation, from traditional handling of citizens’ affairs to modern, i.e. electronic implementation of public services. As the research shows, the level of development of e-government services in Poland differs from the average in the EU, despite a significant improvement in such areas as open data, pre-filled forms and the availability of e-administration services for enterprises.

Critical factors in the institutionalization of e-participation in e-government in Europe: Technology or leadership?

This article examines citizen participation as a key factor for the sustainable development of democracy and public institutions. The purpose of this study is to offer a theoretical and empirical description of the status of civic engagement in e-participation in Europe. The article examines the necessary yet challenging goal of engaging citizens so that they participate in and improve our advanced society in a sustainable manner. Two research methods are used: a critical literature review and quantitative data analysis. The findings contribute to the development of civic engagement in public decision making.

Characterization of e-Government adoption in Europe

The digital divide in Europe has not yet been bridged and thus more contributions towards understanding the factors affecting the different dimensions involved are required. This research offers some insights into the topic by analyzing the e-Government adoption or practical use of e-Government across Europe (26 EU countries). Based on the data provided by the statistical office of the European Union (Eurostat), we defined two indexes, the E-Government Use Index (EGUI) and an extreme version of it taking into account only null or complete use (EGUI+), and characterized the use/non use of e-Government tools using supervised learning procedures in a selection of countries with different e-Government adoption levels. These procedures achieved an average accuracy of 73% and determined the main factors related to the practical use of e-Government in each of the countries, e.g. the frequency of buying goods over the Internet or the education level. In addition, we compared the proposed indexes to other indexes measuring the level of e-readiness of a country such as the E-Government Development Index (EGDI) its Online Service Index (OSI) component, the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) and its Government usage component (GU). The ranking comparison found that EGUI+ is correlated with the four indexes mentioned at 0.05 significance level, as the majority of countries were ranked in similar positions. The outcomes contribute to gaining understanding about the factors influencing the use of e-Government in Europe and the different adoption levels.

Digital transformation and egovernment. For a research agenda on the Liguria Region

The contribution analysis the effects of digital transformation, provides a critical assessment of the policies on e-government in Europe and in Italy, and draft a research agenda focused on Liguria Region. The article moves from the need to conduct research aimed at analyzing the change in the relations between subject and institution in contemporary western societies. The article, focusing on official documents, explores the strategies of digital transformation adopted by the EU. Liguria is a case study of interest because, starting from the 2016-2018 Digital Strategic Program, has adopted a strong focus on the principles of Open Government and an explicit decision to invest in specific digital services for citizens and businesses.

Geographies of e-Government in Europe

Government use of the internet – e-government – varies considerably in its degrees of sophistication. This article explores the spatiality of e-government in Europe. It first situates the topic within wider theorizations of geographies of cyberspace. Second, it reviews e-government and its implications. Third, it turns to the digital divide in Europe. Fourth, it maps national e-government readiness and e-participation scores and correlates them with socio-economic measures. Fifth, it provides several overviews of successful West European e-government programs. It concludes by emphasizing that e-government must be approached geographically in a manner tailored to different national contexts.

Using the Linked Data Approach in European e-Government Systems

This article describes the Linked Data approach, based on principles defined back in 2006, which can play an important role in the domain of semantic interoperabiity of government services. Therefore, this article explores the technical aspects and challenges of implementation of the revised European Directive on the Public Sector Information (2013/37/EU) that provides a common legal framework for a European market for government-held data (public sector information). It examines how the Linked Data approach facilitates the PSI Directive implementation, and in particular, the maturity of standards and tools for statistical Linked Data processing. The statistical domain has been selected due to its relevance for policy prediction, planning and adjustments, and well as its significant impact on the society, from citizens to businesses to governments. The main contributions are related to the delivered state-of-the-art open-source tools for the managing statistical Linked Data and metadata—quality assessment, exploration—and the recommendations that have been integrated in the EU SHARE-PSI Best Practices collection.

Living apart together

Purpose – Against the backdrop of European eGovernment (eGov) and new public management strategies, public sector mergers are the ultimate transformation after collaboration and integration. The land administration domain is useful to evaluate how and why mergers occur or not. The domain usually comprises two types of organizations, cadastres and land registries. There are both national and international calls to merge these two types, yet some countries have opted to merge these, while others persist in maintaining two separate ones. How and why this occurs is the key question. Design/methodology/approach – This study applies a mixed-methods approach of data collection and a co-evolutionary perspective on organizational changes. Agencies change alongside perceptions of staff members and external stimuli of policies. These are exposed through narrated personal vignettes and international benchmarking surveys of land agencies. Findings – Decisions on mergers are primarily embedded in local organizational cultures, and follow non-linear paths and are historically path-dependent. Internal staff members tend to disfavour mergers. Contrastingly, external stimuli such as the benchmark surveys act as national and international stimuli which favour mergers. The common narrative of both perspectives is an increased relevance of “simplicity”, which does not however have an effect on merger decisions. Research limitations/implications – The land administration domain is perhaps idiosyncratic. It has a long history with discussions on merging collaborating organizations. Still, other domains affected by eGov strategies have so far only focused on operational interoperability and database integration, and less on the potential for institutional or organizational mergers. Therefore, experiences from land administration will be useful in the future. Practical implications – During the formulation of new eGov projects which foster further collaboration and integration in the public sector, it is necessary to take the merger experiences of land agencies into account. It is especially necessary to be aware of implicit norms which are fostered by positive feedback loops of social networks during mergers, which may influence discretionary decisions. In addition, international benchmarks and ranking need to reconsider their benchmarking criteria which currently only focus on efficiency measures. Originality/value – Mergers may not be a next logical step when collaborating and integrating. Instead, mergers need to be rooted in personal long-standing collaboration practices. Furthermore, individual staff members may only be willing to engage in the operational aspects of mergers if it significantly makes their own tasks simpler and the quality of their work better appreciated by external customers.

Introduction of e-management into practice of tax administration

In the context of globalization of national economies the use of information and communication technologies in the state management is one of the key elements of effective state management, where the e-government acts as an implementation mechanism. At present, there is a need of an in-depth analysis of the essential characteristics of the e-government including its electronic state taxation administration (e-taxation)and its applied aspects on the basis of the informationally developed countries’ experiences, therefore this study is rather topical. The article analyzes development of the e-government worldwide based on the most authoritative international estimations: technological maturity of the states in the area of the e-government according to the E-Government Development Index and readiness of the states for the networked future in regard of the Networked Readiness Index. It gives an analysis of these indicators throughout the countries of the world, as well as the countries in the post-Soviet space. Estonia’s top position in the world rating and its 1st place in the international rating in e-government technology development among the former states of the Soviet Union has been highlighted. The current state of the e-state management of tax administration in Estonia has been investigated, its practical significance has been revealed, and the benefits of using information and communication technologies in the area of taxation have been substantiated. Attention is drawn to the fact that construction of one of the best models of advanced e-government in Europe took pace in no other country but Estonia due to the government support and inclusion of the ICT developments in the category of the government and society’s top priorities. Given the existing information and communication gap between different states, there is a clear need for research of the e-taxation advantages to justify specific tax policies and national development strategies.

Reuse of Public Sector Information in Spain : a solid foundation for a promising future

The reuse of public sector information is the cornerstone in the Open data and Open Government strategies. The European authorities are promoting public information reuse policies as a pillar for the digital economy and a lever for democratic transparency in the European Union. The genesis of the reuse of public sector information policies in Spain has been the Aporta Project, established in 2008 and coordinated by the Ministry of Finances and Public Administration and the Ministry for Industry, Energy and Tourism of the Spanish National Government. The project since its inception aims to promote reuse of public sector information culture in Spain and benefits are being reaped now in the form of a vibrant infomediary sector and a growing number of open data initiatives in all the government layers. A major renewal of the reuse of public sector information strategy in Spain was launched in 2011 following the guidelines of The European eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015 and The Digital Agenda for Europe, the new objective is maximizing the public value of the public sector information through its massive reusage.

Networks for citizen consultation and citizen sourcing of expertise

This study aims to explore how public websites facilitate the creation of networks for citizen consultation. Evidence-based analysis is applied to European public-sector websites to determine the degree to which they adopt digital mechanisms and strategies to facilitate citizen participation and collaboration. This study analyses outstanding European public-sector websites as categorised by the European Commission at the 4th European eGovernment Awards (EeGA) 2009. These finalists, which were selected by independent judges, are taken as a representative sample of the range of eGovernment projects in Europe. Although other eGovernment projects with exemplary features certainly exist, the unbiased nature of this list, which consists of 52 finalists from 31 countries, provides an objective criterion for inclusion, thus making our sample analytically stronger than an opportunistic sample. The selected websites are analysed and classified based on the taxonomy of citizen participation elaborated by Dutton, who defines three levels of digital citizen engagement: (1) sharing, (2) contributing, and (3) co-creating knowledge. These constitute a matrix describing different levels of maturity in an e-democracy. The results of the analysis and the application of this methodology provide an overview of the strategies and policies adopted by European governments to promote and support e-democracy. Interestingly, the results also show that the vast majority of European Union (EU) public websites adopt strategies to promote only the earliest stages of digital citizen engagement, primarily at level 1. This study also reveals how the public sector utilises various tools, social networks and digital resources to create virtual networks of citizen consultation and citizen sourcing of expertise. A valuable result of this study is the taxonomy of digital citizen engagement and its operationalisation, which may be useful for future research. Finally, this work identifies practices, strategies and mechanisms for fostering e-democracy in the EU.

Ciudadanía digital y sociedad de la información en la Unión Europea. Un análisis crítico

La noción de Sociedad del Conocimiento define, en nuestro tiempo, un nuevo marco lógico de mediación social que incide directamente en el proceso general de desarrollo. Desde hace una década, la Unión Europea (UE) viene proponiendo, por ello, impulsar a escala local nuevas formas de gobernanza basadas en las nuevas tecnologías de la información. En el presente artículo, se analizan algunas experiencias comunitarias y se discute la visión estratégica de la Agenda de Lisboa, a fin de explorar los límites que, hoy por hoy, determinan los procesos de apropiación social de las nuevas tecnologías, así como el discurso público sobre eGobierno implementado por la Comisión Europea a partir de los resultados obtenidos en el último lustro.

Current Trends in Pan-European Identity Management Systems

In a globalized digital world, it is essential that persons and entities have a recognized and unambiguous electronic identity that will allow them to communicate with each other. The demand for electronic identity has grown as a result of governments promotion of e-Government, in which the citizen-public administration relationship often has a strictly personal nature and requires digital identification systems that are univocal, secure, and global. In particular, the European Union (EU) in 1995 launched the Interchange of Data between Administrations (IDA) program [20], as well as Interoperable Delivery of European eGovernment Services to Public Administrations, Businesses, and Citizens (IDABC) [11], and Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations (ISA) [14]. These European Union programs seek to foster initiatives to achieve global interoperability between European public administrations in order to offer cross-border services.

Making the law accessible to non-lawyers: effects of different kinds of expertise on perceived usability of online legal information services

To help design an environment in which professionals without legal training can make effective use of public sector legal information on planning and the environment – for Add-Wijzer, a European e-government project – we evaluated their perceptions of usefulness and usability. In concurrent think-aloud usability tests, lawyers and non-lawyers carried out information retrieval tasks on a range of online legal databases. We found that non-lawyers reported twice as many difficulties as those with legal training (p = 0.001), that the number of difficulties and the choice of database affected successful completion, and that the non-lawyers had surprisingly few problems understanding legal terminology. Instead, they had more problems understanding the syntactical structure of legal documents and collections. The results support the constraint attunement hypothesis (CAH) of the effects of expertise on information retrieval, with implications for the design of systems to support the effective understanding and use of information.

Understanding E‐Government in Europe: Re‐booting the State – Edited by P. Nixon and V. Koutrakou

Understanding E‐Government in Europe: Re‐booting the State – Edited by P. Nixon and V. Koutrakou

Interoperability of Cross-Border European Egovernment Services: Some Design Issues

The authors analyse some of the research outcomes achieved during the implementation of the EC GUIDE research project “Creating an European Identity Management Architecture for eGovernment”, as well as their personal experience. The project goals and achievements are however considered in a broader context. The key role of Identity in the Information Society was emphasised, that the research and development in this field is in its initial phase. The scope of research related to Identity, including the one related to Identity Management and Interoperability of Identity Management Systems, is expected to be further extended. The authors analyse the abovementioned issues in the context established by the EC European Interoperability Framework (EIF) as a reference document on interoperability for the Interoperable Delivery of European eGovernment Services to Public Administrations, Business and Citizens (IDABC) Work Programme. This programme aims at supporting the pan-European delivery of electronic government services.

E-Government in Europe Re-booting the state, by Paul M. Nixon and Vassiliki N. Koutrakou

E-Government in Europe Re-booting the state, by Paul M. Nixon and Vassiliki N. Koutrakou

E-Government in Europe: Uniform solutions for all countries?

In many respects, E-Government is just a new name for the informatisation of the public sector, which has been going on for several decades now [6]. The use of IT in public administration and in other branches of government (including parliaments and the judiciary) has attained a high level in many countries of the industrialised world. But until recently, there was hardly any political interest in this ongoing and almost invisible process of modernising government. With the announcement of a National Information Infrastructure by US Vice President Al Gore in 1993, this situation changed fundamentally. Gore heralded not only the potential for a renewal of society which an “Information Society” holds. Unlike his follower in Europe, EU Commissioner Martin Bangemann who pursued an agenda of economic liberalisation and of cutting back public services, he related this potential directly to the goal of improving the performance of the public sector. The renewed “Information Society” rhetoric of the last decade and the modernisation of public administration and public policymaking thus seemed to join forces. Yet an insistence on E-Government in a fairly narrow sense distracted many efforts from effectively harnessing IT and the modernisation of the public sector. Despite many efforts at introducing a “New” Public Management, this modernisation does not progress quickly enough to match societal changes and changing governance structures in Europe. In the new rhetoric of E-Government, the earlier stages of “informatisation” (e.g. process automation, data banks, decision support systems) were often disregarded in favour of bringing as many “services” as possible to the Internet. A focus on the Internet, hence on the improvement of communication, overshadowed the potential of IT to store and retrieve data, to organise workflows, to support human decision-making, to name but the most relevant fields where IT can either automate production processes or serve as a prosthesis for human actors. The modernisation agenda, which is now feasible with E-Government concepts and tools, is much broader than is often acknowledged [9]. A still prevailing view of E-Government stresses the external relationships of government agencies with their suppliers, their addressees (citizens, customers, constituencies) as well as with other government agencies. This view has its merits in that it opens up the predominantly inward-looking structures of IT in government towards a focus on services rendered and on results. Yet it has rightly been observed that E-Government resembles an iceberg. The nine tenths of its volume below the water surface are as important as the top. To grasp the potential of IT for the modernisation of public administration and of public governance, at least four different perspectives have to be combined [10]: