Influence of public policy actors on the development of eGovernment in the Slovak Republic and other European countries

Michal Lukáč
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3067-7883
Ján Ganobčík
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1942-8261

Abstract

Information and communication technologies have undergone substantial development in recent decades. These changes have been manifested not only in the economy, but also in people’s everyday life, as modern technologies have fundamentally transformed working methods, leisure activities, and administrative processes. The strong influence of advanced trends has also left changes in public administration. The international concept of eGovernment has come to the fore, known in Slovakia due to the development of the Internet public services under the “informatization” of public administration. In Slovakia, as well as throughout the world, the primary objective of electronification is to increase the obligations of the state administration, reduce corruption, improve communication within the public administration itself, increase transparency, save finances, eliminate empty bureaucracy, and simplify the contact of citizens with the authorities. eGovernment allows individual states a range of options for delivering public services electronically, such as interactive collaboration or providing information online. In spite of all the advantages brought by information and communication technologies, the Slovak Republic still lags behind in the implementation of computerization in public administration. In the field of electronic public administration, individual processes are constantly influenced primarily by external changes (political), but also by internal changes (organizational). These are precisely the types of changes that can be described as limiting factors for the development of eGovernment. The objective of the present paper is to analyze how public policy actors in three studied countries influence the development and implementation of electronic public administration. The analysis will then culminate in the proposal of appropriate solutions to remove the identified barriers for the conditions of the Slovak Republic.


Keywords

administration; citizen; eGovernment; factors; service; public administration

Act No. 300/2008 Coll. On electronic acts and authorized conversion of documents.

Act No. 365/2000 Coll. On public administration information systems and on amendments to certain other acts.

Council of the Government of the Czech Republic. (2000). Akční plán realizace státní informační politiky do konce roku 2012. [Action plan for the implementation of the state information policy until the end of 2012] Government of the Czech Republic. http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un-dpadm/unpan040761~1.pdf

Digital administration. (2021). The value of Swiss eGovernment cooperation. https://www.egovernment.ch/en/organisation/e-government-schweiz-kurz-erklart/the-utility-of-egovernment-switzerland/

eGov.sk (2008). Electronic public administration. http://info.egov.sk/node/4

eGovernment (2021) Implementing eID. https://www.egovernment.ch/en/umsetzung/schwerpunktplan/elektronische-identitat

European Commission (2015). eGovernment in Switzerland (January 2015, Edition 9.0). https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/document/2015-03/egov_in_switzerland_-_january_2015_-_v_9_0_final.pdf

European Commission (2016). eGovernment in Switzerland. (February 2016, Edition 10.0). https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/inline-files/eGovernment%20in%20Switzerland%20-%20February%202016%20-%20Edition%2010_0%20-%20v3_00.pdfHeeks, R. (2006). Implementing and Managing eGovernment: An International Text. SAGE Publications Ltd.

Jouzbarkand, M., Khodadadi, M., & Sameni Keyvani, F. (2011). Conceptual approach to e-government, targets and barriers facing it. In: 5th International Conference on Application of Information and Communication Technologies (AICT) (pp. 1–5). IEEE. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICAICT.2011.6110903

Kupka, V. (2008) Alternative Ways of Election in the 21st Century. The Way Towards Direct Democracy? Slovak Journal of Political Science, 8(4), 111–138.

Lidinský, V. (2008). eGovernment bezpečně [eGovernment the Safe Way]. Grada.

Mettler, T. (2019). The Road to Digital and Smart Government in Switzerland. In A. Ladner, N. Soguel, Y. Emery, S. Weerts, & S. Nahrath (Eds.), Swiss Public Administration: Making the State Work Successfully (175–186). Palgrave Macmillan.

Ministry of the Interior. (2017). Strategický rámec rozvoje [Strategic framework for development]. Ministerstvo vnitra České republiky. https://www.mvcr.cz/clanek/archiv-implementacni-plany.aspx

Office of the Government of the Czech Republic. (2017). Historie minulých vlád. [History of past governments.] Government of the Czech Republic. https://www.vlada.cz/cz/clenove-vlady/historie-minulych-vlad/statni-informacni-politika---cesta-k-informacni-spolecnosti---dokument-2089/.

Office of the Slovak Government. (2010). Programové vyhlásenie vlády Slovenskej republiky na obdobie rokov 2010 – 2014. [Program Announcement of the Government of the Slovak Republic for the Period 2010 - 2014.] Občianska zodpovednosť a spolupráca [Civic responsibility and cooperation]. https://www.vlada.gov.sk/programove-vyhlasenie-vlady-sr-na-obdobie-rokov-2010-2014/

Špaček, D. (2012). eGovernment: cíle, trendy a přístupy k jeho hodnocení [eGovernment: objectives, trends, and approaches to evaluation]. C. H. Beck.

Wavestone. (2020). Digital public administration fact sheets 2020 Switzerland. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/inline-files/Digital_Public_Admin_Factsheets_Switzerland_vFINAL.pdf

Download

Published : 2022-01-20


LukáčM., & GanobčíkJ. (2022). Influence of public policy actors on the development of eGovernment in the Slovak Republic and other European countries. Political Preferences, (29), 77-97. https://doi.org/10.31261/polpre.2021.29.77-97

Michal Lukáč  michal.lukac@ucm.sk
University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava  Slovakia
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3067-7883
Ján Ganobčík 
University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava  Slovakia
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1942-8261




Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The Copyright Owners of the submitted texts grant the Reader the right to use the pdf documents under the provisions of the Creative Commons 4.0 International License: Attribution-Share-Alike (CC BY-SA). The user can copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose.

1. License

The University of Silesia Press provides immediate open access to journal’s content under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to the terms of the above-mentioned CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

2. Author’s Warranties

The author warrants that the article is original, written by stated author/s, has not been published before, contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, is subject to copyright that is vested exclusively in the author and free of any third party rights, and that any necessary written permissions to quote from other sources have been obtained by the author/s.

If the article contains illustrative material (drawings, photos, graphs, maps), the author declares that the said works are of his authorship, they do not infringe the rights of the third party (including personal rights, i.a. the authorization to reproduce physical likeness) and the author holds exclusive proprietary copyrights. The author publishes the above works as part of the article under the licence "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International".

ATTENTION! When the legal situation of the illustrative material has not been determined and the necessary consent has not been granted by the proprietary copyrights holders, the submitted material will not be accepted for editorial process. At the same time the author takes full responsibility for providing false data (this also regards covering the costs incurred by the University of Silesia Press and financial claims of the third party).

3. User Rights

Under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, the users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the article for any purpose, provided they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

4. Co-Authorship

If the article was prepared jointly with other authors, the signatory of this form warrants that he/she has been authorized by all co-authors to sign this agreement on their behalf, and agrees to inform his/her co-authors of the terms of this agreement.

I hereby declare that in the event of withdrawal of the text from the publishing process or submitting it to another publisher without agreement from the editorial office, I agree to cover all costs incurred by the University of Silesia in connection with my application.