EU - benchmark

In the last few years, Austria has become the showcase for electronic offerings for many other countries. The management and information technology consulting company, Capgemini, was commissioned for the seventh time by the European Commission to investigate eGovernment offerings in 25 EU Member States as well as Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. During the eGovernment Conference of Ministers in Lisbon on 20 September 2007, Austria was declared the European champion in eGovernment for the second time in a row.

Starting at 13th place in 2002, Austria has been able to continually work its way upwards since then. These achievements are even more noteworthy considering that Austria was able to raise the bar and make additional improvements in both study categories in 2007 despite the high standards it had already reached. The online sophistication of base services in Austria is measured at 99% and all services were graded level 4 or 5. This means that, according to the indicator, 100% of online capability has been achieved.

The 2007 study was distinguished by a series of innovations. This made it necessary to introduce a fifth level to the assessment criteria in order to take user orientation into account - a criterion which the Austrian eGovernment services fulfilled excellently. Amongst other new changes this year were the separate analyses of a national portal and the application of electronic identification mechanisms.

The HELP.gv.at site as a "one-stop shopping" portal and the application of the citizen card as a uniform system of electronic identification in Austria contributed significantly to its success. Entire procedures are able to be carried out electronically without changes in the type of media (for example switching between electronic and paper format), starting from filling out an application form and paying fees, to internal processing (ELAK) and delivering official documents and notifications.

For the benchmark 20 base services were defined, 12 for citizens and 8 for businesses. These were used to measure progress in the implementation of eGovernment in the more than 14.000 public administration Web sites that were analysed. The sophistication of each service is judged on a 4 or 5 level scale, starting from the net amount of information, to procedures that can be conducted completely online. In addition, they are also judged on the percentage of services that can be carried out competely online. Those services that achieved this are awarded the highest level.