Electronic government services in Europe: Strategies, projects and applications

In Europe, national electronic government incentives have made a significant contribution to the modernization of administration and its processes as well as its customer oriented services. In this study, European strategies and projects for electronic government as well as their implementation plans were analyzed, followed by an examination of the electronic services offered by the national governmental authorities in Austria, European pioneers in electronic government, the United Kingdom, the electronic government leader in Europe 2010, and Spain as a Southern European electronic government representative. The results revealed that Europe has developed hybrid electronic government strategies for the whole community, and has launched projects in that field, in which member countries have to participate, in order to offer electronic government services at a high level and in a competitive international environment. On a whole, offering a single gateway to governmental information and transactions generally offers higher attractiveness for conducting nationwide business and all incentives for electronic government focus on developing good practices in the area of efficient and effective electronic government. Nevertheless, strategies are transformed and implemented in different ways, and the intensity in the member countries and a union-wide electronic government is still in its infancy.