INFORMATION SOCIETY: GOVERNMENTS URGED TO BECOME USER-FRIENDLY.

Two EU Member States, the Netherlands and Spain, have been encouraged to make greater efforts and introduce further measures to make progress in establishing an information society. The Association of Dutch Consumers has written to the Netherlands' Interior Ministry to ask it to ensure that local authority web sites are made more user-friendly. One of the principal motors of the EU's "e-government" strategy consists in facilitating interactions between the public and administrations through the use of web sites. However, according to a study due to be published in February, 25% of electronic messages from the general public to authorities remain unanswered. The study concludes that the public is keen to use web sites to facilitate administrative procedures at the local level, but that owing to a lack of interactivity, user-friendliness and services, local authorities' web sites are a cause of considerable disappointment. The...