Towards a Digital Europe, Serving Its Citizens

Mobility of citizens within European Member States and their participation with public authorities through access to government information and services across Europe is valuable in itself. These also support the realisation of a number of other important European policy goals, particularly that of stimulating the internal market and all its associated benefits. However, in practice many barriers to cross-border service provision and pan-European access remain. The digital provision of public services, eGovernment, can play an important role in resolving this, due to its ability to reduce the geographical constraints of service provision and to enable interoperability of different administrative and bureaucratic systems of Member States. The stimulation of the development of pan-European eGovernment Services (PEGS) are thus important objectives, and this report compiles and draws lessons from the various outputs of the EUReGOV project, which studied the development of PEGS in 2010 and beyond. In addition, it draws on parallel projects assessing the security aspects PEGS (Securegov) and the evaluation of various EU instruments to support the development of PEGS, such as the eTEN programme. In essence, the report is a comprehensive study of the phenomenon of PEGS. It provides insights into what PEGS are and how they evolve; what their impacts are on the organisation of government services and on the relations between government, citizens and businesses; how PEGS development, readiness and impact can be assessed and measured; and finally what possible policy measures could be taken to support the effective development and roll out of PEGS.