Passing Government Activities over the Internet: An All In One Environment

E-government is the challenge for European Governments, to simplify, accelerate and improve, the delivery of the governmental circle services and facilities to the citizen. According to Lisbon’s Ministerial Meeting, EU group of policies and initiatives, known as E-Europe, among other policies and priorities for the Information Society, gives emphasis on Government online: ensures that citizens have easy access to government information, services and decision-making procedures online. The big issue for e-government is to use ICT to develop efficient services for European citizens and services. In particular: Develop Internet-based services to improve public access to information and public services. Improve public administration transparency through Internet and ensure citizens have access to essential public data to allow them to take part in the decision-making process. Ensure that electronic technology is fully used within public administration, with secure software and usage of secure layers in order to guarantee and reach some security standards. E-government refers to electronic access to government information and services. E-government idea includes fast and improved citizen service from a quantitative and qualitative point of view, as well as the restructuring and reengineering of the providing organization and its services, through the increased usage and exploitation of the capabilities of the information and communication technologies and especially through the facilities and services of the Internet. The escalation of the e-government services begins from the easy dissemination and easy access from the citizen to the governmental information and passes through the electronic transactions between the citizen and the public organization and reaches to the electronic delivery of the requested document by the public organization to the citizen. An obvious prerequisite, in order to support the above “layers” of the e-government services is the development of an electronic infrastructure which is able to support e-protocol, e-applications / e-petitions and internal organizational function of the public organization. In addressing the above content, this manuscript presents an e-government structure which supports and provides the above described “layers” of the e-government services. This e-government structure, which introduces the notion and practicalities of electronic technology into the various dimensions and ramifications of government, has been developed by Net Media Lab of N.C.S.R. “Demokritos” for a Hellenic Public Organization, in order, the latter, to provide public information dissemination, accept electronic document submission and handle them via e-protocol, and support all the operations via the appropriate electronic structure which supports easy communication among the organization’s departments as well as robust and user-friendly document management, storage, search, retrieval, handling and delivery. Key-words: e-government, e-protocol, e-transactions, governmental functions, e-tools