EU Survey on Public Website Usage shows Potential

The largest survey so far on how the users of European websites perceive the benefits of public e-services has just been published, reporting on the opinions of more than 48,000 actual users of a range of e-services in a number of countries. The survey considers their usage of, and satisfaction with, these services. The researchers say the survey is only intended to provide snapshot of the opinion of a significant number of actual users of current public e-services.

As well as satisfaction, economic savings have estimated by multiplying the time saved by average wages. It also provides an indication about the time and, therefore money, saved by citizens and business thanks to the use of the eGovernment services analysed in the survey.

The survey consisted of two phases:
* Gathering information from service providers on the extent to which public services are being used via on-line channels compared to traditional channels (reported here);
* Analysing how well these on-line services are meeting the needs and expectations of the actual users, through an online questionnaire linked to the service (to be reported in UN soon).

In order to obtain high response rates, the 2004 survey focussed on six specific services:
* Reporting personal income tax returns;
* Reporting business VAT returns;
* Registering a new business;
* Submitting a proposal for a public procurement;
* Searching a public library catalogue;
* Enrolment in higher education.

These were chosen for their maturity and as a range of differing types of services. 253 e-service providers answered the questionnaire about the usage of their on-line transactions.

'High on-line percentages in themselves are not always seen as a success criterion, but at this stage of developing on-line services, it is still an important factor. It is therefore surprising that there are still remarkably few statistics on the usage of the individual e-services compared to services offered off-line.'

The study found the following indications of usage for the services considered:

* Reporting personal income tax. The usage of this service on-line ranged from 1.3M to 30M transactions per year. The on-line percentage is on average around 5-10% with the EU (15) leaders at around 30-35%. The average user saved 71 minutes, representing a saving of 7.3M hours in 2003. According to service providers, maximum expected take-up could be as high as 80-90%, indicating a potential benefit of 100M hours per year for EU(15) citizens.

* Reporting business VAT. Transaction numbers range from 440,000 to 3M per year representing from 3% to 45% on-line, with an average of 17%. With an average time saving of 38 minutes per transaction, this saved businesses approximately €29,3M in 2003. Service providers indicate maximum take-up could be around 70%, with some indicating it could be as high as 90%. This offers significant potential for savings to more businesses. At €10 saving per transaction, this could be more than 230M € per year for EU15.

* Registering a new business. For business registration, the on-line percentage is fairly high, up to 40%. 'However, there are administrative challenges in developing this service area. Nevertheless, just as in the reporting of VAT, the time saved by businesses has a monetary value, in this case €2.2M in 2003.

* To place a proposal concerning public procurement. There is still much work to be done on the supply side, before it is possible to effectively measure the demand side. Within public procurement, half of the participating service providers point to improving efficiency as the main reason for developing e-services. This indicates that the back office improvements on efficiency are equally important for the development of egovernment regarding this service.

* Public libraries (Catalogue search). Participating public libraries with a modest e-maturity level, have an on-line percentage under 5%. Libraries with high e-maturity have an on-line percentage well above 5%, with the majority above 50%. There is a clear connection between high maturity level and high on-line percentages, indicating that fully mature services are more successful when it comes to getting the users to go on-line. User value is also high, with users saving on average 81 minutes, representing a saving of 1,021 working years in the countries surveyed. 'In other words, when you are in the public e-library business you have to go all the way and provide the full service.'

* Universities (to sign up for advanced studies). Because there is a large group of service providers who do not know how much the e-services are being used and because there are big differences on the maturity levels and on-line percentages, the take-up in general is difficult to assess. The on-line service of universities can still be developed even though it is the service with the highest maturity in the category of permits and license services.

'These 6 services are frontrunner public e-services on the supply side. The analysis of their take-up gives an indication of how the demand side, i.e. users, reacts to the supplied public e-services. However, it is not possible to make generalised conclusions about take-up of on-line services, because there are large variations in the results and some of the services, even though they are frontrunners, have not reached an appropriate level of maturity.

'The usage survey indicates the leading service providers within each category already provide some significant value for their users with even greater potential revealed as being within reach of most.'

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