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Do citizens really want to engage with government?

At a time when the British government is under fire for its plans to introduce electronic identification, it is worth asking if citizens really care about the on-line public services that are enabled by the adoption of electronic identification and which are at the heart of so many e-government initiatives.

The Scandinavians seem to be taking a pragmatic view that electronic public services cannot be delivered without electronic IDs and their citizens seem to value top-quality services more than they value privacy. The vocal British, who want privacy more than they want to see the spread of government, represent the opposite camp.

Mark Frequin of the Dutch ministry of economic affairs expresses the government point-of-view rather well: “Today’s citizen wants freedom – till the moment that something happens. At that point they want government to protect them.”

As governments strive to be more citizen-focused, they “need to engage with citizens who are increasingly interested in what they do,” says Colm Butler in the Irish Prime Minister’s Office. “This has huge implications for making public services electronic and open to all citizens.”

FP6 investments in technology

Fabio Colasanti, director general, Information Society, at the European Commission is convinced that information and communications technology (ICT) is a key driver in improving European productivity and economic growth. “In Europe, almost 40% of the productivity growth in the last ten years was due to ICT,” claims Colasanti. He also points to evidence suggesting that “Europe’s productivity gap with the US is to large extent explained by its weaker investment in ICT.”

Stimulating research across the EU
Given these concerns, it is not surprising that the largest chunk of the EC’s current framework research programme (FP6) has been sunk into ICT. In 2003, 420 proposals were selected for funding, covering essential technology components and their integration into various application contexts. Together, these proposals received around 1.7 billion euros of EU funding. Colasanti says that only 16.5% of the money was aimed at SMEs across Europe, widely regarded as the engine room for growth, with more effort needed to get SMEs to the point where they could take advantage of such funding.