EU plans for digital age

Tampere library offers online services

BBC Click Online's Simon Hancock reports on some of the best e-government projects from around Europe recently showcased in Brussels.

The European Commission wants Europe to embrace new technology and give health, welfare, education and government services an electronic coat of paint.

But in European terms, few countries come close to Finland which was showing off a project to remove some of the headaches from moving house.

Lauttaamus-Kauppila: Make it easier to move

"Once you have made the notification over the internet, the system will automatically inform your new address to several organisations, the authorities, private companies and so on," said Anna Lauttaamus-Kauppila, of Finland's Population Registration Centre.

Above-average internet access in Finland allows more ambitious projects such as that of Tampere, which conducts most of its municipal business online.

Inhabitants can watch webcasts of council meetings should they wish. But the local library provides its most popular service.

Books can be reserved and ordered online and the system even alerts users to the arrival of new books it thinks will be of interest.

Medical records on tap

In Ireland, though, it is online access to health and social care that people want.

After consultations, the health board there found that many people living away from urban centres wanted information and forms online that would otherwise have needed long car journeys to get hold of.

When the district nurse arrives at their house, she already has with her all the information in relation to that person and it is absolutely up to date

Ursula O'Sullivan, Irish Health Board

Having medical records stored digitally works to the benefit of health workers and patients alike.

"When a patient goes into any hospital or any clinic, they don't have to keep saying my name is, this is my address, my next of kin is, my last vaccination is, etc," explained Ursula O'Sullivan, IT project manager at the Irish Health Board.

"The system and the people at every centre already have this information. When the district nurse arrives at their house, she already has with her all the information in relation to that person and it is absolutely up to date."

E-mail the council

There were also discussions on how to get people to use e-government services. The British town of Sheffield has areas of very low internet access.

So it has begun to provide council information at e-kiosks around the city.

"We were very clear from the start that if this was going to succeed, if we were going to attract people to communicate with the council electronically, then we'd have to provide a wide range of information through the same access point," said Ken Bellamy, Corporate IT manager at Sheffield council.

"Therefore you can e-mail you councillor and find out where you are on the hospital waiting list, at the same time as getting the football results and the lottery numbers from last night."

Exhibitors at the conference were unsurprisingly upbeat about e-government and the EU's assistance in developing new projects.

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