A European perspective towards online one-stop government: the eGOV project

E-Government reflects current visions for public administrations towards modernization and reorganization. Thereof, online one-stop Government targets the improvement of customer-to-government interactions. It provides the electronic public services of distinct public authorities to citizens and businesses in a customer-oriented manner from a single point of access. The customer-oriented approach towards online one-stop Government further offers online public services 24 hours a day from anywhere in an easy-to-use and simple way according to the customers’ needs. Structuring public services around citizens' lifeepisodes and businesses’ specific situations represents such an approach. To speed up innovative developments in the field, the European Commission has provided substantial funding. eGOV is such an EC-funded project that aims at developing an integrated platform for realizing online one-stop Government. Key innovations of eGOV are: a global access point to enter different governmental services and information at distinct levels of public administration and with different devices; and the development of online one-stop Government process models. To develop an integrated one-stop Government platform, different requirements have to be fulfilled. Here, a holistic development approach provides an important guideline to address different aspects impacting advanced one-stop Government systems. With such a holistic approach, despite of the technical developments, integrated process models for online public service delivery are put forward. Furthermore, legal aspects framing one-stop Government developments and social impacts of such developments for different user groups are investigated.