ŠAVŠ/TAČR Digital Czechia in a Digital Europe

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Digitalization of Public Administration and Services Jiřina Bokšová & Michal Bokša With regard to the digitalization of public administration and services, the Czech Republic (CR) lags significantly behind other states of the European Union (EU). Although there have been positive developments in this area – of all five main segments that the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) evaluates (connectivity, human capital, use of Internet services, integration of digital technologies, digitalization of public administration) the most noticeable progress was evident in this category from 2017 for 2018 – the Czech Republic is still well below the European Union average. More precisely, out of a total of 28 Member States, the Czech Republic ranked 22nd 1 in 2018 in the category of digitalization of public administration. Moreover, the Czech Republic ranked 27th out of 28 2 in the ranking of the use of e-services offered by public administration. Although considerable progress has been made in recent years thanks mainly to the e-Identity Card or Citizen Portal projects, digitalization remains largely underdeveloped, especially compared to other Member States of the European Union. This fact can be demonstrated to a certain extent in the European Union’s eGovernment Benchmark 2018. As part of this annual report, which measures the differences among European countries according to their e-government performance, a graph is created that compares the surveyed countries according to 1) Y-axis intersection (i.e. shows the extent to which the surveyed countries offer e-services online) and 2 ) digitalization on the X-axis (i.e. it is determined according to the degree of progress of the country in the four main e-Government segments – transparency, focus on the final users, cross-border mobility 3 and key triggers 4 ). This creates a division into four main quadrants – I. beneficial e-government, II. unused e-government, III. unconsolidated e-government and IV. expandable e-government. According to the results from 2018, the Czech Republic currently still falls into III. quadrant (unconsolidated e-government), 1 Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) 2018 Country Report Czech Republic, European Commission, 2018, see http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/image/document/2018-20/ cz-desi_2018-country-profile_eng_B43F6E27-BF54-1844-69A6178486494991_52216.pdf. 2 Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) Public Services, European Commission, 2018, see http:// ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/image/document/2018-20/5_desi_report_digital_public_ services_B5DBE542-FE46-3733-83C673BB18061EE4_52244.pdf. 3 That is citizens are able to a certain degree use the offered services abroad. 4 For example, e-identification and e-Documents, etc.