Fuente: © European Parliament
http://www.europarl.eu.int/

EU: E-government and its limits

/noticias.info/ - The third and final debate of Parliament's series on the digital society, on Tuesday afternoon, took a closer look at the possibilities and limits of e-government and the various approaches used by different governments to making on-line services available to their citizens.


Ivor Tallo of the e-Governance Academy Foundation in Estonia explained how the Estonian government had made an all-out effort to create a paperless administration and to make life as easy as possible for its citizens. Ministerial cabinet decisions appear on the Internet minutes after they have been taken, while citizens can deal directly with the administration's "back office" without having to go through an intermediate civil servant. Estonians also have the possibility of paying for public transport and parking with their mobile phones, receiving their exam results by text message and registering a company on-line. "We were a young nation and didn't know this wasn't possible to do; so we just did it", Mr Tallo smiled.

The Irish administration took a different approach and decided to put in place the infrastructure rather than to try and offer applications itself. Oliver Ryan of the Irish government agency Reach explained that offering public services on-line is more difficult to do than offering commercial services, as the government is unwilling to close down other channels of communication which may be the only ones available to some people, such as a local office. He pointed out that commercial enterprises can afford to lose some of their customers on the way, but that government has an obligation to offer its services to all customers.

William Davies, a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, added that he was not convinced that everyone needed the Internet, as other communication means such as mobile phones and digital television can fulfill many requirements as well. He pointed out that the Internet is a highly textual tool and therefore not convenient for everyone; some people would still have to rely on oral communication. Moreover, Davies said, face-to-face contacts are valuable in their own right and government should retain a human face.

Alejo Vidal-Quadras, vice-president of the European Parliament responsible for communication, agreed in the sense that the Internet appeared to be used as a means to participate in political life mostly by those who already take part in that. In that respect, he referred to a British study which showed that only a minority of people were in favour of electronic voting in elections. However, he pointed out, on-line public services are becoming more and more popular and the EU institutions are striving to improve public accessibility and accountability through the Internet while guaranteeing its safety.

Olivier Da Lage of Radio France International, who led the debate, summarised by saying that e-business quite clearly cannot be compared to e-government, as the latter has a responsibility to all its citizens and needs to keep open old channels of communication. This also meant, he said, that e-government is not a cost-saving operation. This opinion was shared by Mr Davies, who pointed out that the UK government is spending billions of pounds to put all its services on-line, while the take-up is disappointing. He therefore recommended that governments take customer satisfaction as their starting point instead of dumping all their information and services on the Internet. notas_de_prensa_archivo