E-government developments on delivering public services among EU cities

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Abstract

Since the late 1990s, governments at all levels have launched electronic government projects aimed at providing electronic information and services to citizens and businesses. Although Web sites are becoming essential elements of modern public administration, little is known about their effectiveness. The objective of this paper is to study the quality and usage of public e-services to citizens in Europe.

According to the results of this study, e-government seems to be following a more or less predictable development pattern ranging from a stage in which interaction is limited to what is shown on the screen to stages in which there is two-way communication and service and financial transactions can be completed with a satisfactory level of protection of personal privacy. At present, e-government in almost all the cities studied is merely an extension of the government, with potential benefits in speed and accessibility 24/7. Despite the limited degree of development observed, online access has advantages that are impossible to replicate offline. Even though few expect e-government to completely replace traditional methods of information, e-government is becoming a powerful tool of transformation that has become embedded in the culture and in the agenda of the public sector.

Introduction

Since the late 1990s, governments at all levels have launched electronic government projects, albeit at different speeds, aimed at providing electronic information and services to citizens and businesses. The dramatic development of e-commerce in recent years and the evolution projected for the near future has encouraged consumers to demand more and more customized, rapid, and at home services. In the private sector, research surveys suggest that customers achieve high levels of satisfaction from e-commerce vendors,1 so the consumers of public services are starting to demand the same level of responsiveness and service from their governments as they expect from the private sector.2,3

According to Relyea,4 the term ‘e-government’ was introduced by a joint report – Access America: Reengineering Through Information Technology – of the National Performance Review and the Government Information Technology Services Board in 1997. At that time, however, e-government was little more than a general recognition of a confluence of information technology (IT) developments and the application and use of these technologies by government entities.

At present, there are various ways to understand what e-government means. An early definition is provided by Kaylor et al.:5 “E-government is taken to be the ability for citizens to communicate and/or interact with the city via the Internet in any way more sophisticated than a simple email letter to the generic city (or Webmaster) or e-mail address provided at the site.” In an empirical survey, the United Nations (UN) and the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) defined e-government as “utilizing the Internet and the World-Wide-Web for delivering government information and services to citizens.”6 Both indicate that e-government is an umbrella term covering many diverse applications. More useful was the subsequent US/ASPA division of e-government into five stages: emerging, enhanced, interactive, transactional, and seamless.7,8 More recently, e-government is defined by the OECD as “the use of ICTs, and particularly the Internet, as a tool to achieve better government.”9

In the definitions mentioned above, the differences are not just semantic but reflect priorities in government strategies. The definitions fall into two groups: in one, e-government is defined as the Internet (online service delivery) and other Internet-based activity such as e-consultation, and in the other, e-government is defined as a capacity to transform public administration through the use of ICTs. Internet use by governments should not be isolated from the broader digitalization of government activity as a whole.

The construction and management of Web sites is becoming an essential element of modern public administration, but little is known about the effectiveness of public Web sites. Given the substantial investment in time and other resources in governmental online initiatives, it is essential to begin undertaking the evaluation of governmental Web sites in terms of quality and effectiveness.10 To date, there are no comprehensive benchmarks of the progress of city government Web sites in this regard. The objective of this article is to study the quality and usage of public e-services to citizens in Europe. We study the degree of implementation of online services through the identification of which services are currently offered online by local governments in the countries studied. How Web sites allow interaction with citizens, to what extent they cover the ‘circle of life’, and the breath and depth with which citizens can receive services through the Internet are important issues for simplifying relationships with public administrations.

This study focuses on the Web sites of European Union (EU) local governments with more than 500,000 inhabitants. Local governments in the EU play a key role in the national pattern of government since they administer the welfare policies, together, in some countries, with regional governments and they are the public administration tier closest to citizens. According to Torres and Pina,11 there is a great degree of coincidence in the quantity and variety of services delivered by the biggest EU cities, except in services related to public health and education. This sample is only a small selection of cases given the large number of local government systems across the world and limits discussion to some economically developed nations. Notwithstanding, the advantage of this choice is that these countries serves to provide an exploratory setting for studying the effectiveness and quality of local government Web sites.

The next section discusses the context for e-government initiatives and provides an analysis of key efforts that seek to assess and classify e-government efforts. The ensuing sections present the study's methodology, results, and conclusions.

Section snippets

The context

In Western-style democracies there are three broad styles of public management: Anglo-American, Nordic, and European continental, the second of which is considered by some to be a mix of Anglo-American and European continental types.12 Anglo-American countries emphasize efficiency, effectiveness, and value for money. They are more likely to introduce market mechanisms and notions of competitiveness and envisage the citizen primarily as a consumer of services, as a client. This group includes

Background

E-government initiatives are recent, but they have become a rapidly developing field of empirical study. Institutions and academics have tried to evaluate the performance and characteristics of e-government initiatives in order to give a profile of best practices. At the institutional level, various audit offices have proposed and developed tools for the monitoring of e-government developments. At the academic level, almost all previous research conducted regarding the evaluation of

Methodology

This section describes the method by which the study gathered information about the cities studied and the depth and breadth of the services they currently offer online. The empirical survey used focuses on e-services, a term describing the use of electronic delivery of government information, programs, strategies, and services available online “24/7”.

The research was conducted on the Web sites of 33 EU cities. The cities were large, and generally the national capitals or other cities with high

Analysis of results

As can be seen in Table 1, the average SMB score of the sample is 46.8%, and since 67 services are delivered through the Internet, this result shows a low degree of development of e-government among the biggest cities of the EU. The most common service offered is municipal tax payment, which has been implemented by 85% of cities. Other services such as library catalogues, booking of sports facilities, public employment, public procurement, permission for loading, unloading and driving in

Discussion

The analysis of 33 Web sites of some of the most populous EU cities shows that almost all city governments are shifting from the traditional bureaucratic paradigm to the e-government paradigm albeit with different levels of development. Our survey shows that EU municipalities are already offering citizens up to 67 e-services. The biggest EU cities have embarked upon a wave of e-government initiatives that make use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). However, within such cities

Recommendations and implications

During the last 10 years municipal governments have greatly expanded their presence on the Internet in the EU, so that in these countries it has become easier for citizens to locate and download official information, to communicate with public officials through email, and to conduct transactions through the Internet.

Although worldwide governments recognize ICTs as powerful tools for enhancing citizen engagement in public policy-making and as a way of enhancing citizen trust in governments, for

Conclusions

This article presented the results from a study of the quality and usage of public e-services in Europe. Its objectives were to identify which online public services are currently offered by local governments in the countries studied, to analyze the level of interactivity of online public services, and to gather information about to what extent basic public services are being developed. A first finding shows that, at present, the issue is no longer whether government is online, but in what form

Acknowledgments

This study was conducted with the financial support of the Spanish National R&D Plan through research projects SEC2001-2433 and SEJ2004-0791-ECON.

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