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Stuart Monk - Fotolia
UK gets low score in European e-gov ranking
Leaders in the region got scores of over 80% while Britain achieved just over 61%, a Capgemini report has found
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.
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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%.