Continent at the crossroads

In Stockholm, a busy executive authorises her annual tax return from her mobile phone. In Paris, a young man orders an official copy of his criminal record from an internet cafe. In Prague, a Japanese businessman checks on a government web portal whether he has to register with the authorities. In Manchester, a builder applies for planning permission from a dozen local councils through one electronic form. In Seville, a disabled man collects a repeat prescription from the pharmacy simply by producing a smart card. In Helsinki, computers automatically register a newborn baby.

The list could go on to cover hundreds of public services offered electronically across Europe's 25 countries. Over the past five years, e-government - originally pioneered in north America and Singapore - has arrived in Europe. After a patchy start, a comprehensive programme got under way in 2000 under the so-called Lisbon plan. It set a 2005 deadline for governments to make their main services available electronically.

Although progress has been uneven, this target has largely been met. According to the European Commission, almost all public agencies provide information about their services electronically, and across Europe 46% of public services are "fully transactional", meaning they can be handled entirely electronically. The commission rates the most advanced European e-governments as Sweden, Austria, the UK, Ireland and Finland.

E-government is at a crossroads. Now that they have set up channels to access public services via the web, mobile phones and other new media, governments need to decide what to do with their new electronic infrastructures. This week in Manchester, politicians and public servants from across Europe meet to decide where to go next.

While there will be much celebration, a number of worries will be on the table. One is that even the best European countries are still not among the world's leaders in e-government. The latest annual global study of government websites carried out by researchers at Brown University in the US put no European country in the top five places - these were Taiwan, Singapore, US, Hong Kong and China.

There are also serious gaps in which services have been e-enabled. In general, states are more enthusiastic about providing services that collect taxes rather than give money away. According to the commission's benchmarking survey, which gives a score for "sophistication", services for collecting taxes perform the best with 88%, compared with 50% for applying for permits and licenses.

An urgent priority is how to persuade more people to use e-government. The latest estimate, from Eurostat, is that an average 45% of internet users visit public authorities' websites to obtain information. The figure varies widely between member states, from 62% in Finland to 12% in the Czech Republic. Britain manages a relatively poor 31%.

As only about half of European adults are internet users, these figures suggest that e-government is a minority habit. Worse, they tumble when it comes to doing anything more complicated than looking up information. On average, only 20% of European internet users have downloaded government forms and only 12% have sent completed forms electronically.

Despite these shortfalls, the benchmarking study found evidence that investment in e-government is levelling off. While there are exceptions, in general it has created an electronic veneer, with little change to the "back office" bureaucracies of government.

Further progress in e-government is an ambition of the EU's current action plan, called i2010 - a European information society for growth and employment, launched this summer. Like the Lisbonplan, it sees e-government as a driver of economic growth. A quarter of EU GDP growth and 40% of productivity growth are due to ICT.

The i2010 plan seeks to create a single European information space of new services and content running across fast broadband networks. The plan also involves hopes for IT to make public services "better, more cost-effective and more accessible".

There is a case for relaxing the e-effort. One argument is that some public functions, such as social care, will never be fully computerised (though IT can make a big difference to putting carers in the right place at the right time). Some services that are theoretically possible to run electronically may be best handled on paper.

E-government can also be ruled out by wider policy decisions, from devolution to privatisation. Finally, there is an argument for maintaining traditional paths to government in the name of social inclusion - the people most in need of public services are often least equipped to seek them electronically.

The ministers meeting in Manchester are unlikely to be impressed by these arguments. The i2010 programme includes an "action plan" on e-government to be launched in 2006. It also includes ambitions to close the digital divide.

Europe faces roughly three choices with e-services. Firstly, it could let them wither away in the face of urgent new priorities for public spending. Secondly, it could keep investing in electronic services but maintain them as additional channels to government. Thirdly, it could use e-government to transform the way public services are run, so that they are centred on the users of services.

In theory, the bold third option is the favoured one. Britain, which was one of the first European countries to launch an e-government programme, last month unveiled a new strategy for transforming administrations electronically. At Manchester, it will be lobbying for other governments to follow suit. The argument will be that, although Europe has come a long way in five years, its competitors' economies are on an even faster track towards e-government. Weblinks

i2010 - EU's e-government action plan: http://europa.eu.int/ i2010