François Baroin, the French Minister for the Budget, the Public Services, Public Accounts and State Reform presented a communication on eGovernment on the occasion of the Council of Ministers of 24 November 2010.
In the document the Minister introduced many themes such as the development of online services, the streamlining of the number of governmental websites, the rating of online services by their users and the access to dematerialised public data.
In the framework of the General Review of Public Policies, the Government launched in 2007 an action plan to improve the quality of public services and to develop eGovernment. First significant results include:
- for the first time this year [2010] the threshold of 10 million taxpayers who filed their tax returns online was exceeded;
- most of the administrative forms have been digitised and made available on eGovernment portal 'Service-public.fr', thus allowing over 1.2 million form downloads per month;
- up to 84 % of medical care expenses reimbursement has been dematerialised thanks to the spread of health card 'Vitale', i.e. that over 1 billion medical receipts have been transmitted by electronic means.
In order to keep the eGovernment development momentum, the Government has followed the proposals made by MP Franck Riester in February 2010, thus deciding to simplify the digital environment of the State to ensure better readability. The number of central government websites will be divided by ten in two years. By 2012, the whole information and all the services of the Public Administration will be gathered in approximately 60 websites.
Moreover, the French Government has decided to speed up the development of personalised services for citizens and businesses. By the beginning of 2012, user accounts on personalised eGovernment portal 'Mon.service-public.fr' will be expanded to taxation accounts and the Employment Agency (Pôle Emploi, in French), so as to enable French people to connect with the same login to the main eGovernment services.
Users, furthermore, will be able to provide their assessments of public websites thanks to a common and permanent evaluation tool that will be piloted in January 2011. The system will then be spread to all sites later in 2011.
Last but not least, a single portal of public sector information named 'Etalab' will be created with the purpose of promoting the re-use of public sector data by private sector parties. A project manager is expected to be appointed shortly in order to drive the process towards the publication of this portal by the end of 2011.
http://www.epractice.eu/en/news/5262493