PERSPECTIVES OF E-GOVERNEMENTDEVELOPMENT
IN POLAND
Anna Dziech
Institute of Management and Organisation, Cracow Univeristy of Economics, Rakowicka 27, Cracow, Poland
Keywords: ICT, e-Governement, public services.
Abstract: This paper attempts to describe the phenomenon of e-Governement, which has recently appeared in the
modern governance as the derivative of the global information society. First part of the article explains the
definition and the essence of e-Governement. It also presents some main programmes that are being
implemented in Poland in order to popularise e-Governance. The results of surveys held in year 2005, which
show the actual condition of e-Governement in Poland conclude the article.
1 INTRODUCTION
Information and communication technologies (ICTs)
are playing an increasingly important role in the
daily lives of people, revolutionizing their working
and leisure time as well as the rules of doing
business. In the realm of government, ICT’s
applications main goal is to enhance the delivery of
public goods and services to citizens by improving
the process and management of government and
redefining the traditional concepts of citizenship and
democracy at the same time.
2 E-GOVERNMENT IN POLAND
In many European countries the design and
implementation of e-Government strategies convey a
new vision for the entire public sector. However as
considerable amounts of public founds are invested
in e-Government projects, the outcomes of their
implementation – in terms of value for money,
public value and overall contribution to good
governance – often remain unclear. While it appears
that most governments know what are their
expectations from implementing e-Government, at
least in short term (e. g. cost cutting, efficiency
saving and increased control over citizens and
business) it appears that most users have limited
awareness of both the potential benefit of e-
Government and its associated risks (Baptista,
2004).
Such situation can be very well observed in
Poland, which still stands in front of a number of
challenges of social and technological nature, which
are necessary to overcome if Poland wants to reach
the level of highly developed societies. In such
societies a strong tendency to move from work
based capital administration to administration based
on knowledge (where information and
communicative technology takes the main part) is
noticeable.
2.1 E-Government Initiatives in Poland
As Poland strives to reach the average European
level of introducing e-Government, several national
and regional action plans has been started. Polish
government has implemented the “e-Poland 2002
Action Plan” in order to fulfill the demands of the
“e-Europe 2005 Action Plan”, which obliges EU
members to develop modern public services
including e-Government services. Other programs
that support the development of informatisation in
Poland are:
eTen – its main objectives are: increasing
development of the information society and
acting against disproportions in access to new
technologies in different regions of the EU;
eContentplus – program which strives to
increase the possibilities to access and usage
of digital resources among the citizens of the
European Union.
255
Dziech A. (2007).
PERSPECTIVES OF E-GOVERNEMENTDEVELOPMENT IN POLAND.
In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Society, e-Business and e-Government /
e-Learning, pages 255-259
DOI: 10.5220/0001288602550259
Copyright
c
SciTePress
Both programs are carried out thanks to
European Union’s financial means (Elektroniczna
Gospodarka w Polsce – raport 2005). Unfortunately,
even though, such initiatives as above are in the
advanced stages, the latest surveys show that there is
still a way to go in Poland to reach more acceptable
level of really good quality of e-Government. Main
reasons that contribute to this state probably are:
poor knowledge and awareness of polish
citizens about IT;
poor knowledge and awareness of polish
citizens about IT;
insufficient access to computer technologies for
average Pole (Figure 1).
2.2 Defining e-Government
Most of polish citizens confess they have never even
came across the phrase “e-Government” and without
their awareness, a good “e-Governance” can not be
achieved. One of the definitions of e-Government is:
“e-Government is usage of ICT’s in public
administrations combined with organizational
change and development of skills in order to
improve public services and democratic process and
strengthen supports to public policies”.
Foregoing definition shows that a key aspect of
e-Government is bringing public administration
closer not only to enterprises but also to citizens. In
order to satisfy their needs, new government should
be characterized by (Cattaneo, 2003):
a user and society approach (focused on user
benefits);
access for all through multichannel and
multiplatform delivery;
“Me-Government” – personalization, mobility,
active participation of the citizens;
efficient and “lean” government.
To achieve these objectives, joint actions at all
levels of government and other activities are often
required. In essence, interoperability is a
fundamental condition necessary for development of
efficient and effective e-Government services.
Interoperability is like a chain that allows
information and computer systems to be joined up
both within organizational boundaries and other
organizations, administrations, enterprises or
citizens.
The European Commission plays a strategic role
in promoting interoperability and in the development
of pan-European Services and infrastructure. These
have a major impact on the economies of EU
Percentage of households with access to the internet (%)
78
75
65
64
60
53
50
48
39 39
31 31
22 22
14
17
2626
15
34
31
43
44
51
56
60
59
69
65
46
60
12
19
23
34
45
47
81
54
62
30
19
23
36
47
48
16
84
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
2004 2005
Iceland
Netherlands
Denmark
Luxembourg
Norwa
y
German
y
United Kingdom
Finland
EU-15
Euro-zon
e
EU-25
Sloveni
a
Austria
Estonia
Ital
y
Spain
Latvi
a
Portugal
Poland
Slovaki
a
Greece
Hungar
y
Czech Republi
c
Lithuania
Figure 1: Percentage of households with access to the internet (%).
WEBIST 2007 - International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies
256
member states. Recently the European Commission
ordered conducting a few surveys, which objectives
were to carry out benchmarking of achievement in
implementing of e-Government initiatives in
different countries. Next part of this paper will sum
up shortly the results obtained in Poland.
3 CONDITION OF POLISH
E-GOVERNMENT
Despite the fact that between year 2002 and 2005 the
level of online availability of polish public services
increased by 15% (from 19 % in year 2004 up to
34% in 2005) – see Figure 2 - Poland is still at the
beginning of the process of implementing e-
Government.
Polish score remains low when compared to the
last measurement of EU member states. Only 2% of
the public services surveyed in Poland are fully
available online compared to an average of 45% in
the EU member states (Rozwój eGovernement w
Polsce. Trezcia edycja badań e Europe. 2004).
Polish ratio (21%) was of that value only because of
the obligatory electronic way of sending the social
contributions statements in companies employing
over 5 persons.
Level of the indicator which presents the
development of e - administration in Poland was
measured using 4-level scale. The first level (25%)
means, that the information necessary for starting up
the process of obtaining the public service is
available through the web pages. Level 2 (50%)
represents the “one-way interaction” (a possibility of
downloading forms and applications online). Third
level (75%) shows the “two-way interaction” (a
possibility of filling in the forms and applications
online and sending them back by internet to the
public institution). Finally level 4 (100%) indicates
that public service can be fully conducted via
electronic way (this means that whole procedures
including receiving the final decisions are carried
out through the internet).
In year 2005 over 93,2 % of public institutions
placed the most important information for their
clients on their websites. Permissions and
certificates, ID documents and PIT are the kind of
services which are commonly available for polish
citizens on web pages of public institutions. Forms
and applications that can be downloaded from these
Online sophistication of public service in the EU (%)
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Transaction (full
electronic case
handling)
100%
Two-way interaction
(electronic forms)
75% - 100%
One-way interaction
(downloadable forms)
50% - 75%
Information
25% - 50%
Po la nd
34%
EU 1 0 ( n e w me mb er s )
53%
EU 15 +3 ( o ld memb e r s )
72%
No online service
0% - 25%
Figure 2: Online sophistication of public service in the EU member countries (%).
PERSPECTIVES OF E-GOVERNEMENT DEVELOPMENT IN POLAND
257
web sites usually concern ID documents (20%), PIT
(10,5%) and enterprise’s registration (17,9%). So as
it is easy to notice formalities, that citizens can
handle through the internet in Poland, usually are
limited to information placed on the web pages or
possibility of downloading the forms.
The surveys show, that only 55 % of municipal
workers use internet in their work. They use it
mainly for correspondence with other institutions
(91 %) rather then with citizens. This confirms the
results of researches on development of e-
Government in Poland in 2004, which indicated, that
most of public institutions while planning and
introducing their future actions on the field of e-
Government, very rarely focus on the needs of
clients. Each year Internet becomes more and more
popular tool for government officials, however it is
used rather for simplification of their work then for
getting in touch with citizens (Elektroniczna
Gospodarka w Polsce – raport 2005).
As the main barriers of such a slow development
of e-Government in Poland respondents of the
surveys point at: organizational problems and
employees resistance (40%), problems with
integration of technologies (16%), still to low
possibilities of technology (8%) and problems with
integration of business process (5%).
Comparing to year 2004 the situation of public
administrations institutions with new ICT
technologies hasn’t changed significantly. The only
noticeable change is in the percentage of institutions
using the LAN network (70% in 2004, 84 % in
2005) - see Figure 3.
In year 2005 only 18,5% of public offices used
mechanisms of authentication of recipients such as
electronic signature, coding or alternative solutions.
On the other hand all of them admit to using the
security systems. The most popular are: antivirus
protection (96,4% institutions declared having them)
and barrier systems (in 76% of institutions). In 2004
such solutions were introduced only in 59% of
public administration offices. These could mean,
that public institutions are now better prepared for
protecting the data of their clients, which might
result in increasing of the trust of polish citizens
towards the new e-government solutions.
The surveys show that there is still a way to go in
Poland to reach a more acceptable level of really
good quality of e-Government. For example the
percentage of public services that are at their
maximum level of online development is still on a
very low level. Online sophistication of public
service provision for such target groups as citizens
and business is growing, but public services for
business are still much more developed then public
services for citizens. The most frequent public
services offered for both of the target groups are
shown in Table 1 (Elektroniczna Gospodarka w
Polsce – raport 2005).
Table 1: Most common types of public eServices.
Target group Kind of services
Business
Public procurement (10%),
Corporation taxes (10%),
Company registration
(10%), Data submission
(9%), Social contributions
(8%), Environmental
permits (7%), VAT (6%),
Customs declaration (4%)
Citizens
Income taxes (8%),
Education (7%), Elections
(7%), Social security
(6%), Disabled persons
(6%), Public libraries
(5%), Job search (5%),
Personal documents (4%),
Building permissions
(4%), Car registration
(3%)
4 CONCLUSIONS
It appears that some progress has been made in
introducing e-Government solutions over the past
few years. Poland is also offering some new online
services, thereby acknowledging the growing role of
technology in everyday life. Polish government is
showing a steady progress on several dimensions of
e-Government, but not major leaps forward. On
several key indicators, e-Government performance is
edging up. However movement forward has not
been more extensive in some areas because of the
budget, bureaucratic and institutional barriers. In
order to overcome the above problems, more local
initiatives supported by local communities or
governments are required. The example from other
European countries show, that such initiatives
greatly enhance the implementation of e-
Government.
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REFERENCES
Cattaneo, G., 2003. Building eGovernement: European
Regions alternative strategies . Databank Consulting.
Leitner, Ch., 2003. E-Governement in Europe: the state
affairs.European Institute of Public Administration.
Rozwój eGovernement w Polsce. Trezcia edycja badań e
Europe. 2004. Ministerstwo Nauki i Informatyzacji.
Pascual, P., 2003. E-governement. E-ASEAN Task Force.
Baptista, M., 2004 . e-Governement and state reform:
Policy dillemas for Europe. The Electronic Journal of
e-Governement, Volume 3, Issue 4.
Elektroniczna Gospodarka w Polsce – raport 2005.
Instytut Logistyki I Magazynowania.
1%
4%
11%
40%
84%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%
LAN (Local Area
Netw or k)
Intranet
Wireless LAN
Extranet
None of above
Figure 3: Application of information and communication technologies in polish public institutions in year 2005.
PERSPECTIVES OF E-GOVERNEMENT DEVELOPMENT IN POLAND
259