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Putting the e in European Union – The 2009 Ministerial eGovernment Conference24. November 2009 – 14:25 by Bengt Feil |
From November 17th to 20th city of Malmö hosted the gathering of the eGovernment and eDemocracy tribe. Three events related to the use of the internet and information technologies in administration and politics happened in just one week: The ministerial eGovernment conference, the pre-conference dealing with scientific issues in this field and the popular eGovernment unConference. Csaba already discussed the popular unConference in an earlier article. Therefore I would like to share some impressions I had of the ministerial conference and try to pin down what the essence of the event was.
The ministerial declaration
The central outcome of the ministerial meeting was of course the Ministerial Declaration on eGovernment which was presented at the conference by Minster Mats Odell on Thursday. The declaration incorporates three major themes (for an in-depth critical analysis please read this excellent article by Andrea DiMaio):
- Empowerment and transparency through eGovernment services and the use of ICT
- Improved mobility in the Single Market by seamless eGovernment services
- Efficiency and effectiveness is enabled by a constant effort to use eGovernment
From the angle of the Pan European eParticipation Network the first point seems to be the most interesting one. It is good to see that the European Ministers responsible for this area commit to the use of ICT to improve democratic processes and not only administrative efficiency. This view was shared by the audience of the conference as well: In the final session the moderator (Richard Wilson) ask the delegates which of the three goals they think is the most important one and there was an overwhelming majority voting for empowerment and transparency over the other two goals.
