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

 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 (%)

39 39

31 31

22 22

2626

2004 2005

Iceland

Netherlands

Denmark

Luxembourg

Norwa

German

United Kingdom

Finland

EU-15

Euro-zon

EU-25

Sloveni

Austria

Estonia

Ital

Spain

Latvi

Portugal

Poland

Slovaki

Greece

Hungar

Czech Republi

Lithuania

Figure 1: Percentage of households with access to the internet (%).

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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 (%)

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.

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.

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