Prologue

• Author: G. Arévalo Nieto/E. Fernández Vicente/J.A. Messía de la Cerda Ballesteros/J.A. Rubio Blanco
• Pages: 7-7

7

PROLOGUE

In this book we study the aspects related to e-government and data protection

at European level, and specially the protection of personal data useb by public

administrations to provide public services. Our primary objectives with this

work are the following:

xTo assess how prepared European administrations are to take full

advantage of e-government and e-participation services.

xTo assess how much European administrations are currently benefiting

from e-government and e-participation services.

xTo assess data protection in European administrations as far as e-

government and e-participation services are concerned.

The methodology followed stems from that used by the United Nations,

complemented by our interest in data protection. Specifically, we have built

indexes to measure e-government readiness (based on a measure of telecom

infrastructure, education and governmental web services), e-participation

services and data protection. Simple statistical analyses have aided us to extract

relevant information.

For data availability reasons, the study has been undertaken at a European level,

at a partner level, within the E-Prodat project, and, finally, at a regional level

within Spain, Portugal and Italy. Data has been obtained from several sources

including United Nations reports, various databases from EUROSTAT and the

Spanish, Italian and Portuguese statistical offices, together with a survey

conducted among partners.

As interesting results, we show the considerable heterogeneity within Europe,

both at national and regional levels as far as telecoms infrastructure, e-gov web

services and e-participation are concerned, as well as the homogeneity as far as

education is concerned. Finally, the heterogeneity as far as data protection

within e-government is concerned is showed also.