About
In many ways the single market in Europe is far from ‘single’, and its potential benefits are not exploited. One typical barrier to reaping the Internal market’s potential is directly caused by different public administrations in Member States. Lack of interoperability of administrative systems forms a major barrier to the mobility of goods, services, people and capital, and leads to significant transaction cost for all cross-border activity. This shortcoming thus maintains existing unnecessary administrative burdens and perpetuates a situation of unrealized potential economic growth.

Given the principle of subsidiarity and the fact that the MSs remain the key sovereign actors in the EU, administrative diversity is and will largely remain a fact of life. Differences in institutions, legislation and administration can to some extent be reduced through harmonization and standardisation in certain areas. However, this takes a lot of time, and is in many areas not feasible or even desirable.

Rather than trying to reduce institutional and administrative diversity as much as possible, we should try to reduce the costs related to this diversity. eGovernment offers unique possibilities to do so. Increasingly, public service provision is gaining a European dimension, through increased international interoperability and accessibility. The picture is not clear-cut, but the “Europeanisation” of public service provision is taking place in different forms and at different levels, through different mechanisms and pathways, by different actors, driven by a variety of motives and needs.

The Member States want and expect an active role of the Commission in this area, to structure, stimulate and improve existing developments. In this workshop the different pathways towards a European administrative sphere are identified and discussed in terms of drivers, barriers and actors, in order to identify points of leverage at which policy would be most effectively aimed.

Objectives of the workshop

• gain further insight into processes of Europeanisation of eGovernment: the actors, pathways, and 'levers'
• suggest ways to improve Europeanization of eGovernment, beyond good practice exchange; by e.g. linking up similar national services, developing joint services, centrally developing PEGS.
• facilitate the exchange of ideas between case owners among themselves and with the COM policymakers in eGovernment
• forging the PEGS Community
• suggesting high potential and high impact services that could be developed at pan-European level.
  
  

Value added to participants:

• find out what state of play is at the EU and in MS
• work to support next phase of eGovernment in Europe
• Case owners may meet colleagues and share experience; show case solutions and seek answers, particularly related with cross border issues
• National eGovernment policy makers involved in large scale pilots may find answers, particularly to dealing with cross border issues, and discuss approaches and possible services
• Commission: gain inputs for policy development in CIP ICT PSP, ePractice, eGovernment Action plan, etc.
• Business: understand what bottlenecks in PEGS development are and show case possible solutions
• Academia: share conceptual knowledge and insights and get feed back from practitioners from across Europe
  

Format
The workshop will have an interactive format in which the main issues are addressed in presentations; followed by brief moderated discussions. Participants will be challenged to work in break out sessions to discover:

• what the key incentives would be for them to link up with other/similar eGovernment services?
• what value added PEGS would have overall and in the specific policy areas that they service?
• what they would see as the main barriers?
• what actions could be taken to overcome these?

Fees
Workshop attendance is free of charge. Free lunch will be provided. If you are not an ePractice member, before signing up for the workshop you need to register