eGovernment the key to a competitive digital single market

Advanced digital services, such as eGovernment, provide tremendous opportunities for improving and modernising public services for citizens and businesses and for enhancing the efficiency and transparency of government operations", said Ioannis Tsoukalas MEP, Member of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy of the European Parliament (ITRE) and EPP Group Shadow Rapporteur for the own-initiative Report on "a competitive digital single market - eGovernment as a spearhead".

"Especially in times of austerity, governments must be able to 'provide more for less' to citizens and businesses. Public services in many Member States face significant challenges and eGovernment is the obvious solution for transforming the public sector into a factor of development for economy and society", continued Mr Tsoukalas.

The creation of a European eGovernment Area, for cross-border transactions of European SMEs can be an essential part of our efforts to establish the EU digital single market, spur economic and social growth and meet the societal and political challenges the EU is facing.

One of the seven flagship initiatives of Europe's growth strategy, EU2020, is the "digital agenda for Europe", a strategy for exploiting the opportunities offered by rapid advances in digital technologies. In this context, the Report adopted by the ITRE Committee recognises the multiple benefits of eGovernment and the interoperability of digital services for citizens, businesses and especially SMEs, public administration, and calls for the acceleration of the procedures for their wider use in order to achieve a truly European Digital Single Market.

Mr Tsoukalas concluded: "One of the key objectives of the Digital Agenda is that by 2015, 50% of EU citizens and 80% of enterprises will have used eGovernment services. We need, therefore, to speed up the deployment of these services by tackling existing e-barriers and digital illiteracy especially amongst the disadvantaged groups of the population and the people living in remote areas of Europe, as these are the people that could benefit the most from these services".