The Commissioner highlighted the substantial progress made by most public administrations in Europe in developing and providing electronic public services. He had a word of praise for the hosts of the conference, the Slovenian Presidency, which together with Austria, Malta, Portugal, Denmark and Estonia, is now one of the leaders in the process of enhancing eServices delivery in Europe. 

'But,' he cautioned, 'over the years, my generation has gradually become accustomed to interacting electronically with our administrations – and nowadays most of us, acting as citizens or as businesses, expect to be able to communicate with administrations electronically, in a simple and easy way. I believe that we have reached the point where it becomes necessary to move from eGovernment to iGovernment.'

'The move to eGovernment was driven more by the need of all Member States to ensure cost savings and increased efficiency,' he added. 'The move towards iGovernment is much more driven by users’ needs – by the need for flexibility and transparency coming from citizens and businesses across the EU.'

'In addition to this', he stressed, 'we need to be able to deliver public services that are personalised to each user'. 

Pooling resources
'The Commission is trying to improve the interoperability between Member States administrations – notably through programmes such as IDABC', Siim Kallas explained. 'This is definitely an area where the Commission and Member States need to pool resources to create common policies, a common framework and a solid governance structure, so as to support an interoperable and cost-efficient exchange of information across borders'.

On the other hand, the Vice-President underlined that 'we constantly strive to improve the efficiency and transparency of information exchanges within the Commission in the framework of our eCommission strategy, to the benefit of businesses, citizens, staff and our partner administrations in Member States'.

Avoiding digital barriers
The Vice-President concluded that 'from past experience, it is evident that more ICT is not necessarily better ICT: sometimes less is better. Real progress in this field means not creating isolated systems that can barely talk to one other. It also means not developing new systems when suitable ones already exist.

Less is also often better in the case of public administrations. In particular, they should stop asking users to provide information that they have already provided.  We should streamline administrations and rethink completely how Governments interact with citizens and businesses. Integrated, interoperable and transformed governments are better, iGovernments are better'.

'Europe has removed its internal borders; let’s now remove its electronic barriers'.

Article published in Synergy 10 - Special Edition