e-Europe 2005 – A study on the degree of alignment of the New Member States and the Candidate Countr

This is the first study which addresses the challenge of alignment of the new member countries with the eEurope 2005 Action Plan. It captures a broad range of factors related to ICT infrastructure and provides a differentiated picture of the development across the current 15 member states, the 10 new member states and the 3 candidate countries.

The following is reproduced from the executive summary of the paper

2004 is witness to the accession of 10 countries out of the 13 candidate countries to the group of 15 current European Union members. This enlargment of the European Union increases its scope, and also diversity. The new member states come with varying historiesfrom ex-USSR states such as Lithuania, to ex-Czechoslovakian and Yugoslavian states.

In the light of the importance of the development of the Information Society, the European Union has elaborated eEurope action plans that provide a framework in order to benchmark member states. The eEurope Action Plans aim to facilitate the ubiquitous access to the benefits of the Information Society by European citizens. The eEurope 2005 benchmarking indicators serves as the foundation upon which this research report strives to compute the competitiveness of member nations in the ICT domain, and their level of alignment to the incumbent EU nations.

The eEurope 2005 Index computed assesses 28 European Countries1 on the basis of their ICT development and Internet usage. The Index is a composite of 5 key indicators:

• Internet Indicators
• Modern Online Public Services
• Dynamic eBusiness environment
• Secure Information Infrastructure
• Broadband

Based on the performance of the countries on the above 5 dimensions and their resulting eEurope 2005 Index, the nations are divided into 4 categories:

• Global Leaders
• Totally Aligned
• Somewhat aligned
• Development required

[pdf – 964 KB]