Survey shows overall satisfaction with public e-services, but usage stats appear to be low

A large-scale survey among European businesses and citizens published on 1 December 2003 by the Commission shows users are generally satisfied with the quality of public e-services in Europe. It reveals that "almost 80% of the users approve of the quality of e-services" and more than half of them are "very satisfied with the service." Moreover, the users said they would recommend the services to other people they know, making them true "ambassadors" for the dissemination of knowledge on public e-services, the report says.

But the study also says respondents may not be representative of all users of public e-services in Europe as they are likely to be "more advanced users of information technology than the average European citizen." Another problem is quantifying the number of users of public e-services - this data is largely unknown to webmasters and e-service providers. In addition, 28% of the respondents experienced 'usability' problems in one way or another when aceessing public e-services. The report found ease of use is the single most important factor for citizen satisfaction while businesses were more concerned with the speed of the websites.

The objectives of the survey were to:

• Identify which on-line public services are currently used by citizens/businesses in the participating countries
• Analyse the level of quality of online public services
• Gather information about which basic public services are being used and whether these services are responding to the needs and expectations of citizens/businesses in Europe