Italy’s delay in the digitalization of the public administration is known, and improvements from year to year are slow in coming. This is the conclusion reached by major international bodies, from the EU Commission to the OECD and including the World Bank.
Suffice it to say that in 2015 only 24% of Italians claimed to have had “interactions with the public administration in the last 12 months.” A far cry from the over 80% in Denmark and Estonia, but even from other big countries, such as France (63%), Germany (53%), Great Britain (49%) and from the EU average (46%). Only Bulgaria and Romania fare worse than the Italians.
And that’s not all: since 2008 the improvement has been just 4 percentage points. And only 12% of Italians have sent official forms through the web sites of the public administration in the last year compared to 42% in France and 32% in Great Britain. Italy is also in the rear for access to broadband or for the use of e-gov by businesses.
How can the advantage of other countries be explained and what would the benefits be of a race to catch up? The researchers from Bem Research try to provide some answers. “The diffusion of innovation,” explains Carlo Milani and Mariachiara Marsella, authors of the report dedicated to this theme, “is one of the most important factors in determining a country’s growth capacity, and the digitalization of the public administration has a particularly important role. What distinguishes the best-performing countries is the availability of technologies that facilitate the use of e-gov, transparency, civil service training and information to citizens, but also simplicity, often with a single password to access the services.”
Paris, from Adele to the “Map”
In France the e-gov strategy began with the Adele (Administratiion éléctronique) program in 2004 by setting a defined timetable and a series of periodic checks. The stated goal - which, according to experts, has been reached - was to make the public administration accessible to citizens and businesses through the use of technologies. In 2012 another piece was added to the puzzle: the digital agenda. The “Map,” the plan for the modernization of public action, arrived one year later, to create a “shock of simplification” with 200 measures to make the citizens’ relationship with bureaucracy less complicated and to save €8 billion per year starting from 2017. Among these, the extension of the identity card’s duration to 15 years or the possibility of registering a car online. Today, according to a study by the EU Commission, there are 12 services online for private citizens and 8 for businesses: from tax procedures to requests for official documents, the relationship with the bureaucracy has become more direct.
The English moves
British e-gov took its first steps in 2001 with the creation of the “government getaway” hub to put the services among the various departments online and from then various announcements and strategies followed. In 2004 the government decided to bet on the digitalization of the public administration to improve the efficiency of its services. The hub split up into “directgov” for citizens and “businesslike.gov” for companies. In 2009 under Prime Minister Gordon Brown the Cabinet office in charge of the management of the e-gov launched a blog to receive suggestions from users. In 2012 a new strategy began with the first list of public services that must be guarantee online through the “gov.uk” portal. According to a recent EU Commission survey, in Great Britain there are 11 procedures that citizens can carry out all or in part online, and there are 8 procedures for businesses. Online, for example, one can contact the tax authorities, make a request for welfare payments and for certificates.
The German system
In Germany, the e-gov story began in 2010 and the Ministry of the Interior is responsible for it. But the initiative took off only in 2011 with a strategy for the construction of a federal infrastructure that led to the creation of the only portal, GovData, which today is called Bund.de. Here last year 11 million searches were conducted. The debut of the electronic identity card in 2010 is a sign of things moving forward. In 2014 the e-gov program was enriched with a digital agenda focused on the cooperation between the federal regions. Today there are 14 services that the German public administration offers with just a click: 7 for citizens and 7 for companies. Among these, in addition to tax procedures, there are library book loans, complaints to the police, and the registration of patents and VAT returns.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Chiara Bussi
Quelle/Source: Italy Europe 24, 13.06.2016
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