2020 eGovernment benchmark: cross-border use of eIDs lagging behind

Every year, the European Commission publishes an eGovernment benchmark which gives an assessment of the efficiency of digital public services in Europe.

Four criteria are evaluated:

1. User Centricity – To what extent are services provided online? How mobile friendly are they? And what online support and feedback mechanisms are in place?

2. Transparency – Are public administrations providing clear, openly communicated information about how their services are delivered? Are they transparent about the responsibilities and performance of their public organisations, and the way people’s personal data is being processed?

3. Key Enablers – What technological enablers are in place for the delivery of eGovernment services?

4. Cross-Border Mobility – How easily are citizens from abroad able to access and use the online services?

This year, the benchmark shows an improvement in all assessed countries, in particular for user centricity, including mobile friendliness. However, the evolution remains very slow when it comes to key enablers (eID, eDocuments) and cross-border mobility. Interestingly, the report shows that digitalisation is at a much more advanced stage for public services provided to businesses -by contrast with those provided to citizens.

Please find below the relevant links (short version of the report, long version and country factsheets) and some key extracts from the Insight Report.

User centricity leading digitalisation, incl. mobile friendliness

Overall 78% of public services can be completed entirely online. User centricity scores the highest from the four indicators. Businesses benefit from a better digitalisation, compared to citizens. 76% of services are available online for businesses, compared to 65% for citizens.

The front-runners in eGovernement are Malta, Estonia, Austria and Latvia, followed by Denmark, Lithuania and Finland. Luxembourg, Hungary and Slovenia have shown the most progress in the last two years.

There was also real improvement in mobile friendliness of digital public services during the past two years. 76% of services are now suitable for use on a mobile device.

Local administrations catching up with national ones

Local administrations tend to be behind national/federal governments in terms of digitalisation of services. However, local administrations are progressively catching up.

For some countries, this general trend does not apply. In Malta both national and local levels are 100% available online. Interestingly, in Cyprus local services score 20% higher than national services, and in Croatia and North Macedonia regional services score 14% and 11% higher than national services, demonstrating a strong investment within local and regional online services.

57% of public services accessible with national eID

The eID indicator averages 57%, while Malta, Denmark and Estonia are the star performers with scores of 90% or higher. This means that users of public services within these countries can use their eID for almost all online services that require online identification, and their login remains active, even when switching between different service providers.

Moreover, businesses can use their national electronic identification more often than citizens. The eID indicator stands at 71% for business services and 53% for citizen services. Additional efforts are needed to implement eID solutions across all government organisations and particularly those that provide services to citizens.

The eDocuments indicator displays an average of 68% across all of the EU27+. Unsurprisingly, this category is led by the same countries that scored highly for eIDs. Services using eDocuments allow users to upload and download documents in a secure manner, and is a crucial technology for those who are housebound.

Again, services obtained by businesses are more often supported by this digital enabler than services obtained by citizens. Business can upload or obtain government documents in 82% of the online services, citizens in only 64% of the cases.

Cross-border mobility lagging behind

This is the lowest score of the four indicators. The gap between national and cross-border online availability is partially due to the fact that there is no fully-operational international network of eIDs. Citizens can use their own national eID solution for only 9% of the services from other countries, an increase of just 3% in the last two years. For businesses this number jumps to 36% (compared to 18% two years ago).

This barrier is followed by documentation issues: 67% (80% two years ago) of the procedures where documentation is required do not allow foreigners to upload or retrieve documents. Language problems pose an additional barrier: 43% (50% two years ago) of the procedures lack alternative languages on the service website. 18% (22% two years ago) of the services cannot be completed, because users are requested to physically visit a government office and foreign users cannot do so while being abroad.

Low level of cybersecurity

Only 20% of all URLs assessed meet half of the 14 basic security criteria evaluated. Public authorities should take advantage of the open source testing tools used within the eGovernment Benchmark assessment and implement follow-up measures. These can include securing proper procurement to ensure security by design, and prioritising budgets accordingly to invest more heavily in a sophisticated cybersecurity plan.

If you have any questions on this issue, please do not hesitate to contact Camille Dornier - Policy Manager: camille.dornier@eurosmart.com