Analyzing and Comparing European eGovernment Strategies

An increasing number of countries and international organizations are realizing the benefits of eGovernment in the economic, social and administrative sector. The drive to implement eGovernment has resulted in the formulation of many eGovernment visions and strategies, driven by their own sets of political, economic and social factors and requirements. The aim of this paper is to gather and analyze approximately thirty eGovernment strategies from the European Union as a whole and from its Member States in particular, so as to identify their constituent elements, to explore the current European focus and to provide an overview of the issues addressed in the strategic documents concerning eGovernment. The identification, analysis and comparison of eGovernment strategies from across the EU has enabled us to identify some common elements, existing in the majority of the documents. First of all, a common structure has been identified within the documents, consisting of the following sections: an Introductory section which presents the current context and describes the vision of the document, the Objectives and Priorities section which describes what will be pursued under the umbrella of the strategy in order to implement eGovernment, the Measurement and Evaluation section which develops evaluation frameworks and key indicators for eGovernment and the Sustainability section which aims to ensure that the implementation of eGovernment will continue to deliver benefits after the expiration date of the strategy. As regards to eGovernment objectives, the analysis of the strategic documents identified 29 common priorities which are pursued, with the most common ones being the set-up of a single access point (portal) in order to deliver eGovernment services, the enhancement of ICT skills both for the civil employees and the society. One the other hand, the less common objectives refer to the avoidance of external barriers which could encumber further progress, the flexibility of achieving targets and so forth. The alignment with the European eGovernment strategy has been a major objective for the EU Member States. However, the diversification of the objectives and priorities suggest influence of both the international context and the national setting. Finally, the main focus of most eGovernment strategies has shifted from the online provision of services to the transformation of the government services into citizen-centric processes.