From E-Government to Good Governance and from Good Governance to Development... The Arab world in the global E-Government readiness report 2005 Arab E-government

Commissioner Viviane Reding, the European Commission's commissioner on the Information Society gave a speech “Citizens first - the next wave of government services on-line” at the Forum Européen de l’Administration Electronique in Paris on 15 December 2005.

Ms Reding stressed how much she welcomes the Ministerial Declaration as a landmark reference for the eGovernment Action Plan that she will propose in Spring 2006.

As she mentioned in her speech: “We all recognise that making eGovernment a reality remains a significant challenge. At the same time, much progress has been made. All EU Member States now have an eGovernment strategy for modernising their administrations. Over 90% of public services providers are online. The great majority of citizens who are using these online services are positive about them. Usage is also growing. According to a recent Eurostat survey in 2004 over half of businesses and citizens used the Internet to access public authorities’ websites. This is quite encouraging, especially since the percentage of citizens making these visits doubled from 2003 to 2004.”

It is important to note, for example, that many citizens have submitted their tax declarations electronically in 2005 in overwhelming numbers in France. Together they saved millions of public administration hours. Also, in some countries electronic public service cards are starting to appear so that citizens can obtain official documents at a click. Across Europe many companies are already regularly reporting via the Internet on social security or value-added tax. However, most of the present users are highly-educated and relatively young. As Ms Reding argues, "future eGovernment should take care to exclude no-one". Indeed, the focus has to be "citizens first".