Still in Nice for conference. What’s been very interesting so far is the discussions with people about e-government on a European basis, parcticularly Germany and the Netherlands. In Germany the structure of government - federal, regional and local, is impacting on how e-government is developing in both service terms but also in the development of standards. With a more autonomous government structure, different standards are emerging in different places. There has also been a committment within government to open source solutions. One aspect I’ve now heard of, but don’t fully understand is the idea of city data banks - I’ll park this for further research.

In Germany there are over 400 e-government projects looking at service delivery, but no overall central political point responsible for delivery, so in some places it’s the Minister of Finance, in other places someone else. There doesn’t appear to be any equivalent to the e-Government Unit. Work has started on the electronic unique ID, but has yet to finish.

In the Netherlands it’s many of the same problems as in the UK. There are 40 projects and many municipalities struggle to know where to start. There has been a bit of a hiatus with service delivery although this is now changing. The big challenge now is integration of services. A unique identifier has just been introduced for citizens, so that’s a bit ahead of the UK; also have all the same issues relating to data protection and FOI.

This is some of the info I’ve absorbed so far, but please don’t quote me on any of it. It’s been useful to get a European and different perspective on all of this.

I will also make the following observations which are nothing to do with e-government (or are they?).

1. The presumption is that proceedings will be held in English. I find it embarrasing that European languages are not taught in schools in the UK in the same way they are in Europe;

2. The British monarchy are the laughing stock of Europe;

3. Everyone I meet from other European countries seem to have something in common with each other - Britain feels cut off from that shared European identity (refer back to point 1 above as a partial explanation).