BITERAP, a consortium or cluster of IT oriented companies, is an “early bird” example of PPP (Public Private Partnership) in Slovakia. The aim of this PPP is to provide IT solution support for local government and state organizations in the Slovak republic. BITEAP’s activities are aligned with local government and EU programs for establishing an e-government platform and content.
BITERAP’s ASP solution offers governments bodies access to leading edge IT software solutions, as the basic tool for the daily work of those organizations. The software works in a similar manner to other ASP solutions, but is specifically tailored for the needs of the public sector:
Continue reading ‘The BITERAP cluster provides ERP support for public government in Slovakia’
Yesterday, I was a speaker at the Digital Cities conference hosted by the city government of Schwechat, a town located just outside of Vienna next to the airport. The topic was “Is the digital city prepared for the impact of new technologies?” (That was my rough translation from the German.) I was asked to give a talk entitled Social networks: how social is a blog?
On the train back from Vienna I got to thinking about conferences. I’ve attended many. Over the years I’ve developed a good strategy for getting the most out of any conference. I follow three rules …
Continue reading ‘Three rules for getting the most out of any conference’
One role of government is to allocate funding for infrastructure or projects that the private sector is unwilling or unable to support. The question is usually where do you draw the line.
For example, the vast majority of road construction is paid for by the government. However, when it comes to longer distance highways, the public sector has learned that motorists are often willing to pay a surcharge to travel on faster modern highways.
How well do the private and public sectors work together in Hungary? What kinds of public funding are able for private sector investments? Next week I’m running an afternoon panel discussion on the topic, in cooperation with the Hungarian Ministry of Informatics and Communications, so please follow the link for further information and be sure to attend.
eGovernment implementation in all European countries is about to create a substantial market for ICT sector companies. Reasons for using ICTs in public sector are numerous. First, governments, at all levels, are urged to cut expenditures in order to reduce fiscal burden while they have to optimise access to information and “customer” care. Thus, governments have faced pressure to improve the professionalism with which government agencies are managed, notably through the use of ICTs.
Although governments seem committed to fulfil the implementation of eGovernment, they still lack accurate strategies to achieve the set-out targets. The first challenge for governments is to solve issues of horizontal fragmentation (policy areas) and vertical regionalization when setting-up eGovernment. Secondly, as governments are under constant pressure to reduce their expenditure, they often shift in favour of implementing open source software.
Continue reading ‘Opportunities for ICT suppliers in the public sector’
The European Commission issued, on 13 February 2006, a communication on interoperability for pan-European eGovernment services (COM (2006) 45 final). The communication calls upon Member States to collaborate so that interoperability is realized at European level.
Although much progress has been made on eGovernment at all levels of public administration in Europe, the Commission is now paying attention to the development of the cross-border dimension of eGovernment. In its communication, the Commission argues for closer collaboration between administrations from different Member States to support the emergence of better services for European citizens and businesses and a more efficient implementation of EU policies.
Continue reading ‘The European Commission wants more interoperability between national eGovernment services’
In January 2006 the European Commission launched a project aiming at transferring the EU government-to-business e-services to the public administration bodies in Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.
TRANSFER-EAST is a Specific Support Actions aiming at favouring the transfer of learning, facilitating the exchange of e-government good practices and their transfer when appropriate and contributing to enhance the quality of e-government initiatives across Europe. TRANSFER-EAST will also address critical issues that might hamper the transfer of good experiences such as the legal aspects of the process of re-using successful developments among the different administrations, the ownership of the systems and their relationship with the public tendering procedures which the public administrations have to follow, and the various aspects of the public-private partnership undertaking notably tax services (corporate tax services, VAT declaration, social contribution for employees services), statistical services (registration of a new company, submission of statistical data) and other services (custom declarations, environmental permits, participation in public invitation to tender, etc.).
Continue reading ‘G2B best practices for the CEEC public administration’
The US Department of Homeland Security has published information that a live test of e-Passports, that contain contactless chips with biographic and biometric information and the readers that are capable of reading these e-Passports, began January 15, 2006 at Terminal G at San Francisco International Airport. This test is a collaborative effort between the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore that will run through April 15, 2006. Participants include citizens of Australia and New Zealand who have been issued the new e-Passports, Singapore Airlines crew and officials holding trial e-Passports and U.S. diplomatic and official e-Passport holders. The e-Passport contains the holder’s biographic information and a biometric identifier, in this case a digital photograph, embedded in a contactless chip set in the passport.
At the end March 2005, European Commission criticized Slovakia and nine other EU member states for failing to implement European legislation regulating the telecommunications market. Slovakia has two months to comply before the case is forwarded to the European Court of Justice. Slovak current telecommunications law is outside the EU norms designed to protect against privacy infringements, such as electronic advertisements (spam). It also warns that Slovakia’s market environment is not accessible enough to alternative network operators.
Slovakia belongs among less EU developed countries in telecommunications. At present, here is no implementation of alternative fixed telephony services (interconnected with the Slovak Telecom network), VoIP services through public fixed network are blocked by legal obstacles (since May 2000), carrier selection and carrier pre-selection services are not provided and local loop unbundling regime is not implemented in real. In previous three years, there were two activities of few members of parliament to submit legislation ensuring improvement of regulatory regime, but after first adoption by parliament it was given back to the parliament by veto of president - finally amendments were twice not approved after president veto (2002 and 2003).
Current telecommunication market is characterised by rapid decrease of customers in fixed network (current 23% of penetration represents status in 1996), duopoly regime in mobile networks (80% penetration) and by latest positions in EU in internet use, ADSL implementation (penetration 1%) and in use of eGovernment services (23rd position in EU-25).
Capgemini has published its 5th Report on the Development of eGovernment Services in the EU-25 and Norway, Iceland and Switzerland.
During 2004, the sophistication of online eGovernment services in the EU-25 reached 65%, in the EU-15, 72% (an annual increase of 5%, compared to 7% for the previous year). In the new EU member states the result was just 53%. Full availability of eGovernment services in the EU-25 reached 40%, in the EU-15, 46% and in the new member states just 29%.
From a total of 28 countries monitored in this study, Slovakia was ranked at 26 - the last two positions belong to Poland and Latvia.
The issues of “thinking and acting locally” have taken a back seat in the UK Government’s drive for regional democracy and representation in England. While London and a handful of other cities have opted for directly-elected Mayors, there’s been little appetite elsewhere for measures that are widely-perceived to constitute increased bureaucracy rather than increased service and accountability.
It’s interesting and refreshing then to see businesses voting at a local level to increase the taxes they pay ( a 1% increase on their business rates - a method by which local authorities levy an ‘open for business’ tax upon businesses in their area) - in return for increased services. Continue reading ‘Businesses vote to pay more tax for services: local issues’
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