EN Official Journal of the European Union C 9/65

Opinion of the Committee of the Regions on ‘The European eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015’

2012/C 9/12

THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS

— welcomes the drafting of the European eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015. The plan’s priorities – crossborder services, user empowerment, re-use of public sector information (PSI), eParticipation, an online single market, green government and interoperability – are all domains in which regions and local authorities are simultaneously actors, providers and beneficiaries;

— welcomes the efforts of European administrations to empower citizens and businesses through eGovernment services, as well as increased access to public information and improved transparency. The Committee endorses endeavours to raise public participation in the political process, improve mobility within the single market and cut red-tape for the public;

— emphasises that the European eGovernment Action Plan can significantly help bridge the digital divide and achieve the objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy, while at the same time helping to fulfil a number of the key social, cultural and economic needs of the European public;

— emphasises that, while open source software has achieved growing acceptance in the marketplace, open standards and open interfaces are also key enablers of the transfer and use of information and interoperability across organisations, systems, and devices.

Rapporteur Ján ORAVEC (SK/EPP), Mayor of Štúrovo Reference document Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions on The European eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015 (Harnessing ICT to promote smart, sustainable & innovative Government) COM(2010) 743 final

I. POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

The information society (IS) has been a tremendous accelerator of economic and social progress. Recognising this, all countries and regions worldwide include the enhancement of the IS in their development plans and, through public intervention, try to speed up the establishment of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) infrastructure, support the creation of content, accelerate the services offered and support citizens in increasing their degree of utilisation. Europe is among the global pioneers in this respect and its agenda should be reinforced by the participation of LRAs.

The European eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015 must be seen as the practical embodiment of the aims of the Digital Agenda for Europe. The barriers to a more dynamic increase in the potential of ITCs, which have led to these initiatives, are more than evident in Europe. It is particularly important to set about improving access to innovative technologies in local and regional authorities, which are closest to the citizens and provide services at grassroots level. The lessons have to be learnt from past projects that have failed to deliver the anticipated results.

The Committee of the Regions supports

1. proposals in the eGovernment Action Plan that are very relevant to local and regional authorities, which should consider ICT as an essential component in taking the plan forward. The priorities of the new strategy at local and regional level can support the quality of life and social and economic activity of citizens, along with stimulating more efficient and personalised public services, as well as local businesses. There are a number of means by which regions and cities can support the full exploitation of this potential;

2. one of the main aims of the Action Plan, which is the promotion of e-Inclusion – i.e., an inclusive, regionally and socially equitable information society which uses ICT to increase competitiveness and improve public services;

3. the involvement of local and regional authorities in a broad collaboration to improve the interoperability of government systems and make the provision of public services more effective (1).

The Committee of the Regions welcomes

4. the drafting of the European eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015. The plan’s priorities – crossborder services, user empowerment, re-use of public sector information (PSI), eParticipation, an online single market, green government and interoperability – are all domains in which regions and local authorities are simultaneously actors, providers and beneficiaries;

5. the efforts of European administrations to empower citizens and businesses through eGovernment services, as well as increased access to public information and improved transparency. The Committee endorses endeavours to raise public participation in the political process, improve mobility within the single market and cut red-tape for the public;

6. the one-stop-shop approach, which has been taken up in several Member States. The creation of such public authority service centres throughout the EU would be of fundamental importance for both the public and businesses in its Member States. First of all, however, the appropriate conditions must be created for eGovernment and at the same time there must be a comprehensive evaluation of the implementation of the EU services directive;

7. worthwhile work on promoting and monitoring public health, especially in areas that are remote or difficult to access. The elaboration and implementation of national programmes to digitise healthcare in the Member States would greatly facilitate the delivery of health services at local, regional or cross-border level.

The Committee of the Regions emphasises

8. that local and regional authorities play an important role in this process. Therefore: — The European Commission and Member States should take the measures necessary to ensure that local and regional authorities are fully and effectively involved in the governance of ICT-related initiatives (2). — Europe’s potential for developing ICT services in the public and private sectors should be fully exploited, and thus ICT should be used as a means of improving local and regional authorities’ services in fields such as healthcare, education, public procurement, security and social services. EU-backed public-private partnerships involving local and regional authorities and ICT-development SMEs in the area of public ICT services can serve as an excellent cornerstone for building up local skills and knowledge across the EU (3). — When further developing the infrastructures and services under the eGovernment Action Plan it will be crucial to ensure that all security requirements mainly in terms of confidentiality, availability and integrity at every level are met to ensure optimum levels of privacy and protection of personal data, prevent any illegal tracking of any kind of personal information and profiling (4), including shopping preferences, medical status, health records, and so on, and make sure that no known method can be used to attack the information processing and storage system. — Developing crossborder public authority services means that the IT projects involved must cover aspects of interoperability and eIdentification of citizens (Stork), eSignatures, electronic service of documents and other building blocks of eGovernment so that these are dealt with in a European context: this is also a fundamental requisite for increasing the individual mobility of citizens in the EU. Interoperability is a fundamental part of crossborder public authority services that requires an international approach, beyond the scope of local authorities. — Regional and local authorities should be systematically consulted in the conception, implementation and governance of the measures designed to put eGovernment across Europe into effect. Regions and local authorities should be recognised along with the Member States as main promoters of the closer cooperation between users and producers of ICT innovations in different reaches of governments and administrations (5).

9. that adopting rationalisation and modernisation measures and cutting back red tape as a priority course of action for reducing costs, as well as rationalising and simplifying administrative procedures and services, would boost economic activity, reduce bureaucratic procedures and formalities and also facilitate relations between individuals and the administration and help bring down the administrative costs of doing business, improve the competitiveness of enterprises and stimulate their development;

10. that the underlying principles of the Action Plan – openness, flexibility and collaboration in relations between European public administration and the public – are of the utmost importance for successful implementation;

11. that the idea of transparency is especially important here, since it ‘will enable citizens to have electronic access to those personal data that are held on them when available electronically’ (6). In fact, this data is already accessible to them. Nevertheless, the Committee of the Regions has reservations about the Commission’s proposal to inform citizens electronically as a matter of course from 2014 whenever their data are being processed by automatic means. Citizens should be informed only when it useful to them and this is proportionate to the costs incurred;

12. that the closer involvement of local and regional authorities would make it possible to harness the full potential of re-using public sector information, as local and regional authorities could play a significant role in supporting such use to increase competitiveness and create new jobs (7);

13. that the European eGovernment Action Plan can significantly help bridge the digital divide and achieve the objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy, while at the same time helping to fulfil a number of the key social, cultural and economic needs of the European public (8);

14. that the introduction across Europe of the principle that people’s details and the details of objects be registered once only, without the need for repeated form-filling, will do a great deal to remove unnecessary red-tape for the public and generally to cut public administration costs. Attention must thereby be paid to due compliance with data protection legislation;

15. that a fundamental requirement for better use of ICTs is the removal of the inequalities that still remain in various parts of the European Union, especially the outermost regions, in people’s access and level of equipment. This is particularly the case in local and regional authorities, where not only are there marked differences between different regions within the country, but also between local authorities depending on their size. Small towns and villages tend to lag far behind when it comes to mustering the technical, organisational and staffing capacity needed to extend the use of ICTs. This is why a start has to be made on offering unified platforms for providing local and municipal council services in the form of software as a service (SaaS). This will involve tapping into current IT developments such as virtualisation and cloud computing, which will cut the cost and time it takes to carry out projects. These developments should be based essentially on existing platforms and on the use of open source software;

16. that the document should stress in particular the need to bridge the gap between regions, or at least stop it from widening. We are particularly conscious of the risk of eGovernment projects only being adopted and implemented in certain regions;

17. that seamless crossborder services that enable businesses to provide services and products all across the EU (SPOCS - Simple Procedures Online for Crossborder Services) through easy electronic public procurement (PEPPOL - Pan-European Public Procurement Online) will be a great stimulus for the further development of business in the EU;

18. that, while open source software has achieved growing acceptance in the marketplace, open standards and open interfaces are also key enablers of the transfer and use of information and interoperability across organisations, systems, and devices;

19. that local and regional authorities have a key role in expanding access to broadband in areas where the market fails (9);

20. supports the resolution of the European Parliament of 6 July 2011 on ‘European Broadband: investing in digitally driven growth’ (10) and in particular the view that a universal service obligation would contribute significantly to the development of broadband communication in rural areas;

21. that access to high-quality broadband services at reasonable prices can increase the availability and quality of services provided by local and regional authorities and – in the case of microenterprises and SMEs – facilitate product marketing. Remote regions and communities, especially the outermost ones, are expected to benefit considerably from more widespread and faster access to broadband services (11);

22. that access to broadband could thus offset the difficulties arising from the remoteness of rural areas, through better communication between the administration and users – both private and commercial (12);

23. that the eGovernment services to be developed should encompass areas such as: user-administration relations; the contribution of administrations to fostering public debate (dissemination of essential public information, public forums, online consultations and – more broadly – new public consultation mechanisms); dealings between companies and the administration (such as social data notifications, recruitment notifications, transfers of tax and accounting data); the application of e-commerce techniques to the public procurement sphere (e-procurement); and the new work and organisation methods within administrations (job transformation, cooperative working, teleworking);

24. that measures aimed at giving every European access to basic broadband by 2013 and fast and ultra fast broadband by 2020, in accordance with the EU’s commitments in the Digital Agenda for Europe, should be swiftly put into place;

25. that, when it comes to using the potential of eGovernment to reduce the carbon footprint, regions and cities could play the leadership role in identifying local ICT opportunities for action, sharing technological best practice, identifying project partners, allocating funding to invest in ICT tools, measuring progress and communicating success.

The Committee of the Regions points out

26. the particular importance of the service sector in drawing the benefits from ICT, since industries such as the wholesale and retail trade and financial and business services are among the most important investors in ICT (13);

27. that the continuing digital divide is worsening social exclusion and economic divergence. The creation of equal opportunities in the digital domain is therefore essential for both social and economic reasons. In this light, eInclusion is of critical importance for achieving the objectives of the eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015 and hence the objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy (14) in the field of social and economic development;

28. that providing privacy protection depends on certain factors, including the structuring of public sector bodies (the majority of which are at local level), the convergence of EU legislation, the fostering of an innovative culture among public authority officials, including through the use of a common code of ethics, and among citizens, through defining and raising awareness of their digital consumer rights, and the management of ICT-based applications (15);

29. the necessity to ensure that security requirements are met at all levels while internet infrastructure is being put in place and related services developed. This will guarantee maximum protection of privacy and personal data and prevent any unauthorised monitoring of personal data and profiling, including information on buying habits, medical conditions, medical records, and so on (16);

30. that local and regional authorities have a key role to play in fighting cyber crime and protecting data security. They should be involved in the collection of data on cyber crime statistics and in the training of personnel;

31. that, regarding the principle of a competitive PSI market, it is essential to ensure that private service providers face the same conditions as public institutions, to enable access to public data by private users, and to clearly point out the conditions under which these data can be used for commercial purposes (17);

32. that, in the governance of the processes underlying the eGovernment Action Plan and the related public policies, coordinated action by the European Union, the Member States and local and regional authorities, fully respecting the subsidiarity principle, is of extreme importance, as the CoR pointed out in its White paper on multi-level governance (18).

The Committee of the Regions notes

33. that the social partners, LRAs and governments need to work together to ensure that a virtuous circle of human resource upgrading, organisational change, ICT and productivity is set in motion and that ICTs are developed and used effectively. Policies aimed at enhancing basic literacy in ICT, building high-level ICT skills, fostering lifelong learning in ICT, and enhancing the managerial and networking skills needed for the effective use of ICT are particularly relevant (19) and are among the core competencies of local and regional authorities;

34. that, in this communication, the European Commission announces an impressive number of actions to be taken under the eGovernment Action Plan;

35. that, as they stand, the measures and actions foreseen in the communication do not appear to raise any issues regarding their compliance with the proportionality principle in that they do not go further than what is necessary to achieve the intended objectives. Any additional burden on Member States as a result of these measures should be kept to a minimum and be checked for cost-effectiveness;

36. that the proposed forms of action (soft policy measures) are as simple as possible in order to achieve the intended objectives and leave as much room for national (including regional) decision as possible;

37. that the particular measures to be implemented will have to be closely monitored and evaluated, in order to ensure that these do not exceed what is necessary to achieve the objectives set and that Member States retain maximum scope for decision-taking and that businesses are not burdened unnecessarily. A system for monitoring procedures must be introduced to this end;

38. that breaches of security are a threat to utility services (local water, energy, green power companies, and so on);

39. that managing climate change is one of the most important political challenges facing local and regional authorities in the years ahead and that to achieve the ambitious 2020 targets it is necessary to ensure that ICT-enabled solutions are readily available and also that they are fully deployed;

40. that regions, like local authorities, are key players in the field of ICT for sustainable growth since they have responsibilities in numerous activities concerning planning, granting permits, investment, procurement, production and consumption. Transport, housing and public buildings, and public lighting infrastructure, which are planned and provided by local and regional authorities, are areas where significant CO2 reductions and energy savings can be achieved. Furthermore, the vast potential of ICTs to improve energy efficiency boosts the European Union’s competitiveness and increases business opportunities at local and regional level.

The Committee of the Regions recommends

41. that the European Commission and the Member State governments actively foster the involvement of LRAs in the use of ICT innovations in the public sector, namely by promoting best European practices and providing advice and methodological recommendations (20);

42. that extensive training be provided for all staff, particularly specialist technicians (e.g. networks, systems, security, privacy, etc.), staff working directly with security procedures involving different methodologies and staff generally or indirectly involved in innovation and modernisation drives (e.g. teaching digital literacy to consumers) on trust and security related issues (21);

43. that an Information Impact Assessment be developed by the European Commission and be included in the code of conduct of intergovernmental relationships to assess the impact of new policies and new legislation on municipalities and regions, requiring change in information management and adaptation of new technologies. The impact assessment on information systems aims at: — determination at an early enough stage whether the law is enforceable in practice; — investigation of how the building blocks of eGovernment can contribute to a smooth implementation process; — determination of the extent of adequate implementation support that is needed, given the present levels of development and the adaptation capacity of municipalities.

44. that a greater focus be placed on raising awareness at regional and local level, given the lack of knowledge and/or mechanisms to identify the information available for re-use and in order to help public bodies to be more transparent and promote the re-use of PSI (22);

45. that local and regional authorities in Europe make extensive use of ICT opportunities to meet the challenges of an ageing population and thus improve the quality of life of older people, keep them integrated with local communities and promote local and regional competitiveness through the provision of personalised services (23).

Brussels, 12 October 2011. The President of the Committee of the Regions Mercedes BRESSO

(1) CdR 10/2009 fin.

(2) CdR 283/2008 fin.

(3) CdR 156/2009 fin.

(4) CdR 104/2010 fin.

(5) COM(2009) 116 final.

(6) COM(2010) 743 final.

(7) CdR 247/2009 fin.

(8) CdR 14/2010 fin.

(9) CdR 5/2008 fin.

(10) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P7-TA-2011-0322+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN

(11) CdR 252/2005 fin.

(12) CdR 14/2010 fin.

(13) The Economic Impact of ICT Measurement, Evidence and Implications - OECD Publishing (2004).

(14) COM(2010) 2020.

(15) CdR 247/2009 fin.

(16) CdR 247/2009 fin.

(17) CdR 247/2009.

(18) CdR 89/2009 fin.

(19) The Economic Impact of ICT Measurement, Evidence and Implications - OECD Publishing (2004).

(20) CdR 156/2009 fin.

(21) CdR 104/2010 fin.

(22) CdR 247/2009.

(23) CdR 84/2007 fin.