Accenture's fifth annual global e-government study

The push for international integration
The European Union is pushing the limits in its drive for integration and interoperability of eGovernment
services. The Interchange of Data between Administrations (IDA) is a European Commission-driven
strategic initiative that uses advances in information and communications technology to support rapid
electronic exchange of information between member state administrations. Initially, IDA helped set up
infrastructure, establish common formats and integrate new information and communications technologybased
business processes. Now, it is improving network services, tools, security and interoperability.
The latest version of the IDA action plan calls on the European Commission “to issue an agreed interoperability
framework, based on open standards, to support the delivery of pan-European eGovernment services
to citizens and enterprises.” In early 2003, representatives from the EU institutions and member states’
administrations began discussions on the European Interoperability Framework. It is worth noting that while
the European Union has no power to enforce any of its plans or initiatives, its hope is that member state
administrations will use the guidance provided by the European Interoperability Framework to supplement
their national eGovernment interoperability frameworks with a pan-European dimension, and thus enable
pan-European interoperability.
To drive pan-European cooperation, the IDA initiative provides funding to stimulate technical innovations.
All projects are evaluated within the IDA’s Value of Investment framework. The framework emphasizes that
each major IT investment should be analyzed at the earliest stage for the value of its outcomes against the
cost to achieve them. The methods in the framework are suggested for evaluating and calculating costs and
benefits from new initiatives as well as for following up on previous investments. One of the most ambitious
of these IDA initiatives is the pan-European e-services portal.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Europe’s e-services portal faces significant issues attendant with integration
at such a monumental scale. Creating a portal that aggregates the necessary information while accommodating
differences between national governments and multiple languages is highly complex. A recent
IDA strategy update released in October 2003 admits that there are huge practical difficulties involved in
coordinating such a portal. “All EU national administration websites are structured in their own unique
way, providing different levels of information on their public services, according to their importance and
availability,” it said. Consequently, the portal will be kept as a pilot until later in 2004, although eventually
it will become the first point of contact for citizens and businesses engaged in cross-border activities.
“It is important that the European Union as an organization adopts
IT, that we gradually start to communicate more efficiently, by using
technology, between the institutions of the European Union and all 15
administrations. All problems are constantly solved on a bilateral basis…
However, it would be more rational to create more common solutions
for Europe.”
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—Gunnar Lund, Minister for International Economic Affairs and Financial Markets, Sweden