Governments urged to make progress on information society measures
Two EU Member States, the Netherlands and Spain, have been encouraged to make more effort to bring in measures associated with a move to an information society. The Dutch consumer association wrote to the Minister of home affairs in the Netherlands to request that more was done to make the websites of local governments more user friendly. One of the main thrusts of the EU's eGovernment strategy is to help make interaction between the public and government easier through the use of websites. But according to a survey that the Dutch consumer association is planning to publish in February, 25 per cent of e-mails sent by the public to municipal governments are not answered. The survey found that the public wanted to use the websites to make dealing with local government issues easier, but found that a lack of interactivity, user friendliness and a restricted number of services on municipal government websites meant that many were disappointed. The Dutch Ministry of home affairs has set a target of having 25 per cent of government services being available online by 2003. Meanwhile the Spanish government announced another delay to the introduction of UMTS (universal mobile telecommunications system) technology in Spain. The technology offers broadband services to mobile communications users and Spain had originally predicted that these would be available in the country in August 2001. But the Spanish Ministry of science and technology announced at the end of January that even the new date, June 2002, would probably not be met due to a lack of handsets. Only certain new handsets can use the new technology and the ministry says that a sufficient number will not be in service by June. The new estimated date for UMTS technology services is June next year.
Countries
Spain