Municipalities around Europe and their need for Secure eGovernment Solutions Electronic and Secure Municipal Administration for European Citizens Venue:Bolzano Clustering Event Author(s):Pim Hengeveld Organisations: Deloitte Date: 04/03/2005

Is there a market for secure e-government with Municipalities around Europe?   eMayor partners collaborate on Market analysis, Investigating Current Status and Market Trends in secure eGovernment transactions   Starting point is a benchmark that Deloitte performs every year together with Telecities and (at the moment) Eurocities   TeleCities is a Subnetwork of Eurocities for cities with eAmbition and acts as a Catalyst of experience and knowledge transfer amongst European cities.   More than 85 percent of all Telecities members has co-operated in the market analysis. This includes cities from Eastern Europe as well as from Turkey, for whom we developed questionnaires in the local languages.

Current Status   The results of the investigation, presented in November in Vienna, have revealed the following about the (readiness of the) market for secure government transactions in Europe: Electronic services are #1 on eGovernment agenda for European municipalities Triggers for eServices are cost reduction and responding to legislation Re-engineering projects tend to be initiated from a point of view of improving internal processes and less with a view on improving service for citizens or relationships Budget issues and resistance to change are still the main obstacles Two-way communication and transactional services are now being planned   In addition some detailed questions on security and IT were being elaborated upon. This led to the following conclusions: eSecurity lags behind the development of eServices In 2 out of 3 cities, citizens have online access to eGovernment applications More than 85% of eServices include personal information of citizens 25% of the cities have intrusion detection processes in place Only 37.5% of the cities use anti-virus software

Main Trends   An analysis within Deloitte’s public Sector team in Autumn 2004 for Europe indicated that Non-central Goverment organisations across Europe are at different stages in their development.   Main Trends for 2005 are summarized in our report “serving the 21st century citizen.”

How far are the Municipalities with eGovernment? Many regions are just getting started with eGovernment, Example: eGovernment in Italy, Regione Abruzzo A number of cities and regions are getting programme management to. Example: eGovernment in Spain, Navarra Modernizing the process is the objective for yet another large group including for example eGovernment in The Netherlands Study Case: Amsterdam. innovation with technology is pursued by a number of forward looking cities, many of them co-operating in Telecities. Example: eGovernment, in Manchester with Intelcities or Aachen with eMayor  The following stages are helpfull when determining product or service offerings:

Trends as elaborated in our new Research Report “Government 2.0”   An analysis of the specific trends in the specific market of government and technology was performed by Deloitte in a broad investigation. Based on interviews with over 500 leading politicians, researchers, technology industry CEOs and leaders, futurists and front-line public employees, we demonstrate the promise and perils of the emerging world of eGovernment in its broadest sense and offer a likely road map to the implementation of a more open, efficient, and effective governments.   The investigation was started because we noticed that we are in the midst of a transformation of government, enabled by technological advances. There is a need to describe this development, to show the new digital government landscape, and to provide a roadmap for navigating the promises and perils. Furthermore we tried to describe digital government issues, like elearning, edemocracy, security and tie them together.   Full reading in the book “government 2.0” by Deloitte’s director of research Bill Eggers.

Some Trends of Government 2.0   Relationship between Citizens and Government Thanks to IT’s ability to deliver customized services and information at relatively low cost, “one-size-fits-all” government can be transformed into “government you design.” Digital government can also help open up the public sector to greater participation and regular scrutiny by regular citizens, The result: a power shift from governments to citizens.   Decline of Civic Participation The Internet is no panacea for the well-documented decline in civic participation. However, by reducing the barriers to civic engagement and widening the opportunities for political debate in a myriad of ways, from e-advocacy and online consultation forums to electronic town hall meetings, political information sites, etc. it can update the agora and the town meeting for the digital age.   Privacy The dangers to privacy from some of today’s technologies are real. However we protect our liberties not by prohibiting government agencies from using the latest technologies, but through a system of checks and balances: Laws and our Rights.   Security The more we rely on cyber-based systems to run our economy, operate our government, and organize our society, the more tempting a target they present to hackers, criminals, terrorists and others who would do us harm. Digital government will only realize its full potential when citizens have the utmost confidence that their personal information is secure.