UK gets low score in European e-gov ranking

The UK is lagging behind the goals set out in the European Union’s eGovernment action plan, a new report has found.

Countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Austria and Malta got an overall score of about 80% in the annual study carried out by Capgemini and consortium partners IDC and Politecnico di Milano for the European Commission. By comparison, the UK got an overall rating of 61%.

The study covers progress made towards the priority areas of plan and the principles set out in the Tallinn declaration of eGovernment for the years between 2016-2020 across 36 European countries. It covered more than 10,000 government websites.

According to the study, the UK has shown growth of over 10% compared with the previous study released two years ago. Britain outperforms on penetration – the degree to which online is used for government services. However, it is underperforming in the front and back-office digitisation of public administration.

Top-level benchmarks measured by the study were: user centricity, which indicates the extent to which a service is provided online – the UK recorded an increase of 86%. On mobile-friendliness, it scored 88%, with 100% for usability.

On cross-border mobility – the extent to which users from another European country can use digital services – the UK scored 92%.

However, on the technical prerequisites for digital service provision in government, such as electronic authentication, the UK scored only 31%, affecting the overall rating.

The study also covered the transparency aspect of digital service delivery, which includes the analysis of responsibility aspects related to processing data in public services.

The UK scored 47% in this indicator, up six points on the previous benchmarking exercise. By comparison, leaders achieved scores of over 90%.