Accelerating the digital transformation of governments in the EU — 2016-2020 action plan  

WHAT IS THE AIM OF THE COMMUNICATION, THE TREATY ARTICLES AND THE CHARTER? Since 2005, the European Commission has adopted EU eGovernment action plans in order to advance the agenda of public sector modernisation across the EU. They aim to support European coordination, collaboration and joint actions on eGovernment. The latest action plan aims to provide support to administrative processes, improving service quality and increasing efficiency by making full use of digital technology. It also aims to reduce administrative burden on businesses and citizens by making interactions faster, more convenient and cheaper, leading to further economic and social benefits for society as a whole. Under Article 197 TFEU, the EU may support the efforts of EU countries to improve their administrative capacity to implement EU law. Under Article 41 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, every person has the right to: have his or her affairs handled impartially, fairly and within a reasonable time by EU bodies, including the right to be heard before any individual measure which would affect him or her adversely is taken, have access to his or her file, while respecting the legitimate interests of confidentiality and of professional and business secrecy.

KEY POINTS The action plan is guided by the vision that by 2020, public administrations and institutions in the EU should be open, efficient and inclusive, providing borderless, personalised, user-friendly, digital public services to all citizens and businesses. Innovative approaches are used to design and deliver better services in line with the needs and demands of citizens and businesses. Public administrations use the opportunities offered by the new digital environment to facilitate their interactions with all interested parties and with each other. This action plan aims to join up the efforts being made to remove existing digital barriers to the Digital Single Market. It does not have a dedicated budget, but helps to coordinate resources available to EU countries through various EU programmes. Initiatives within the plan are based on these principles:

• Digital by default, delivering services digitally as the preferred option through a single contact point;
• Once-only principle, ensuring that citizens and businesses supply the same information only once to a public administration;
• Inclusive and accessible: digital public services that are inclusive and cater for different needs such as those of people with disabilities;
• Open and transparent: public bodies sharing information and data between themselves, and citizens and businesses having access to their own data, engaging with businesses and others in service design;
• Cross-border, with digital public services available across borders, preventing further fragmentation and assuring mobility within the EU’s single market;
• Interoperable, with services designed to work seamlessly across the single market and across organisations;
• Trustworthy and secure, with initiatives going further than just legal compliance on data protection, privacy, and IT security.