Baltic IT&T
Articles

ICT Events

E-government

E-society

ICT Market

Communications

Archive

News   

Baltic IT&T 2011

ICT Calendar

Contacts








Hosted by:
SigmaNet



 
   
About journalSite Map
Home > News

News266

Commission approves new programme to break down e-barriers

The Commission has approved a proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers on a new programme for the period 201015: Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations (ISA).


In recent years Member States have gradually transformed their administrations to provide public services electronically so that citizens and businesses can communicate fast and easily with their national administrations.
In todays Europe, citizens are free to work in and re-locate to any EU Member State and companies carry out business across the EU. When doing so, they need to communicate with administrations of other Member States. Member States in turn need to communicate with each other to serve the citizens and businesses in the best possible way.
To avoid the creation of electronic barriers (e-barriers) between European administrations, the Member States and the Commission need to strengthen their efforts to ensure barrier-free communication within the internal market.

From red tape to e-barriers: changing challenges
Electronic barriers at national borders are the main challenge of the new era.
When setting up electronic public services to cut red tape and make communication with administrations faster and easier, Member States have mainly been considering the national dimension. However, to serve citizens and businesses in a Europe of mobility, Member States need to be able to communicate seamlessly across borders. Solutions developed without coordination at EU level may prove incompatible and unable to talk to each other. This is where the ISA programme steps in.
In response to the need for coordination and cooperation at EU level, the ISA programme proposes to establish and promote commonly agreed solutions to avoid e-barriers at national borders.

From needs to action: implementation of the ISA programme
Over the period 2010-2015, the ISA programme aims to support and promote cooperation between European public administrations.
ISA focuses on providing cross-border solutions for public administrations by making available common frameworks, common services and generic tools and promoting reuse as well as exchange of experience and good practices.

From IDA to ISA: background
ISA is the follow-on programme to the IDABC programme (interoperable delivery of pan-European e-government services to administrations, businesses and citizens) which comes to an end in December 2009.
The IDABC programme was itself launched in January 2005 as the successor of the IDA programme interchange of data between administrations.
The IDABC and IDA programmes have clearly provided added value to the exchange of information between administrations compared to what could have been obtained from a separate and uncoordinated approach.
The ISA programme will be based on the achievements of the IDA and IDABC programmes and will, as its predecessors, contribute to the further development and implementation of the European e-government strategy.
In November 2007, the Commission made proposals for reform of radio spectrum management to free resources for new wireless services, which were mostly endorsed by the European Parliament on 24 September. If the Council also accept this new form of spectrum management, the Digital Dividend extra radio spectrum available after the move from analogue to digital TV can be used for new wireless broadband services, and not just new TV channels.
Today's Commission report asks if these measures are enough or should a new universal service obligation be considered.
The report also shows strong growth in the number of Europeans using a mobile phone. Since the present Commission took office, the level of mobile subscriptions has grown from 85% to 112%. "These figures are an important vote of confidence of mobile consumers in the health of Europe's mobile sector", says EU Commissioner Viviane Reding. "They show that at present, there is no need to impose universal service obligations on mobile operators even though at least some of their lobbyists try to make us believe the contrary these days."

Background:
Under the EUs Universal Service Directive of 2002, universal service means that citizens must be able to connect to the public phone network at a fixed location and access public phone services for voice and data communications with functional access to the Internet. The Directive also requires that consumers have access to directory enquiry services and directories, public payphones and special measures if they are disabled. The Commission reviews the scope of the Universal Service Directive every 3 years. Today's report invites Parliament, Council, national regulators, telecoms providers, consumer associations and citizens to contribute to a debate on achieving Broadband for All in the EU. These contributions will feed into a Commission Communication in the second half of 2009 and possibly legislative proposals in 2010.
The European Parliament yesterday voted in favour of Commission proposals to strengthen other users' rights ensured by the Directive: the efficiency of the single European emergency number 112, especially for people with disabilities; and the right to change a fixed or mobile operator within 1 day while keeping one's phone number.
Today's report on future of the universal service is available at:
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/ecomm/current/consumer_rights/universal_service/index_en.htm

Source: European Commission


My comment:
Name: 
E-mail: 
366: 
Web site owners do not carry responsibility for materials submitted by commentators and reserve rights to delete ones violating legal regulations and breaching of the decencies. Thank you for understanding!

eBaltics
28.03.2024


Top news
Instantly online - 17 golden rules to combat online risks and for safer surfing mobile social networks [3]
Experts Warn of ICT Labour Shortage and Loss of Competitive Edge in Europe by 2015
Lithuanian organisations has been active to participate in CIP ICT PSP third call

Question for readers
How secure you evaluate your information and data?
Highly secure
  6%
Quite secure, but some security improvements are needed
  1%
Security is insufficient
  0%
No security at all
  93%