.gif){kind=small}
BACK TO HOME
PAGE BACK TO HOME
PAGE EUROPEAN REVIEW
WE HAVE OUTLINED IN PREVIOUS ISSUES THE drive towards delivering government services electronically which both the European Commission and the British government were keen to promote but what has been achieved in practice ? A new survey for the EU attempts to quantify the advantages. It appears that ordinary citizens are saving a total of 7 million hours a year just by completing tax returns online while businesses gain €10 for every VAT declaration that they make from their computers. However this is not nearly enough for Commissioner for the Information Society and Media, Viviane Reding: 'The survey shows that public services on line clearly deliver concrete added value both to citizens and business. The challenge now is for public authorities to provide online public services interactively wherever possible and relevant, and in a manner which is as user-friendly as possible'. The survey calculates that if income tax services were generally available online 100 million hours could be saved and €500 milllion would be recouped by business if there was maximum take-up of electronic VAT facilities.
In the UK it has long been the government's aim to get all possible public services, both local and national, online by the end of this year. While progress towards this goal has had its ups and downs, they still maintain that, for instance, local government will hit this deadline saving £1.2 billion by 2008. At the moment the average council has 79% of its services online. However it is not clear if the provision of electronic services necessarily means that they are used as much as they could be. While things have moved on from the situation a couple of years ago when only 2 inhabitants of Chester had payed their council tax via the local web site, and 46% of adults in England are identified as 'ready and waiting' to use online services, only 12% have actually done so.
Web sites mentioned on this page are available at :
|
European Commission Social Dialogue - Front page: |
http://europa.eu.int/comm/employment_social/social_dialogue/index_en.htm | |
|
'Top of the Web' report on EU eGovernment:: |
http://europa.eu.int/information_society/activities/egovernment_research | |
|
Local e-Government UK - Front page: | ||
THE EU COMMISSION HAS STRESSED THE ROLE that the social partners (trade unions and employers) will play in the changing Europe envisaged in the updated Lisbon process. It is also more than happy when initiatives such as the recent stress agreement come from dialogue between the partners rather than laws suggested by the Commission itself. So, it is not surprising that social dialogue has received the final accolade from the EU: a web site. The new electronic pages are part of the Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities directorate and provide news, events and definitions as well as a searchable database of social dialogue texts containing thousands of framework agreements, joint statements, guidelines, codes of conduct and compendia of best practice. It covers areas as diverse as lifelong learning, working conditions, corporate social responsibility, health and safety, telework and disability.
|
Back to |
Forward to |
Up to |
