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eGovernment Benchmark Report 2024: Steady growth in digital government maturity

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Europe’s digital governments have made steady progress with their delivery of online public services, according to the latest European Commission eGovernment Benchmark report.

However, there’s still room for improvement, notably for cross-border services and services provided by regional and local governmental bodies.

Striving towards interoperability

Interoperability is a key focal point in Europe’s digital policy landscape, and an aspect of digital government into which the European Commission’s annual eGovernment Benchmark report offers insight. Conducted by Capgemini, Sogeti, IDC, and the Politecnico di Milano, the latest benchmarking exercise reveals that vital IT building blocks, known as key enablers, have made the biggest improvement in the past 12 months compared to the other dimensions measured.

Find out which countries are ahead of the game and where others should turn their focus on in pursuit of interoperable, human-centered eGovernment services. Or dive into the details of the results via an interactive dashboard here.

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Key findings: 2024 eGovernment Benchmark

Achieving resilience and sovereignty

The EC’s 21st edition of the eGovernment Benchmark report not only assesses the digital transformation of governments in 2022 and 2023 but also reflects on broader trends observed over the past four years. At a time when it is increasingly crucial for European nations to prioritize the development of resilient and sovereign digital infrastructures, as laid out in the European Commission’s Digital Decade targets, the latest report finds that Europe’s governments showed a noteworthy increase in digital maturity.

In total, 37 European countries took part in the benchmarking exercise, including the 27 European Union Member States. Overall, we can see that user centricity continued its upward trajectory as the most mature of the four dimensions measured. On the other hand, although cross-border services have improved, it is not all plain sailing – just 33% of EU Member States provide cross-border users with the ability to authenticate using their national eID, which will be essential for an interoperable Europe.

The report also explores the growing prominence of AI-induced activities, finding that 29% of portals in the EU across the life events evaluated now offer a live support function that includes AI capability.

These and other findings of the benchmarking exercise offer a solid picture of Europe’s government digital transformation progress along the following four dimensions:

  • User centricity – To what extent are services provided online? How mobile friendly are they? And what online support and feedback mechanisms are in place? This dimension has an average maturity score of 93 points.
  • Transparency – Are public administrations providing clear, openly communicated information about their digital government strategies and how their services are delivered? Are they transparent about policy making and digital service design processes, as well as about the way people’s personal data is being processed? Currently at 67 points, this dimension has improved from last year’s 62 points.
  • Key enablers – What technological enablers are in place for the delivery of eGovernment services? With a maturity score of 78 points, this dimension has improved its performance by 4 points since last year.
  • Cross-border services – How easily are citizens from abroad able to access and use the online services? And what online support and feedback mechanisms are there for cross-border users? At 66 points overall, this dimension has seen a big jump from 57 points last year, but still has most room for improvement.

Although the lower performing services and countries have been slowly catching up with the frontrunners, the latest eGovernment Benchmark once again draws attention to the need to address service gaps in three areas. First, for cross-border users in comparison to national users; second, for citizens who face more digital barriers than entrepreneurs; and third, in the discrepancy that sees central services outperforming their regional and local counterparts.

eGovernment – Benchmarking Europe’s progress

Discover which countries are leading the digital transformation of Europe’s public sector on the journey towards a Single Digital Gateway.

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Highlights

The European leaders are Malta 🇲🇹 (97 points) and Estonia 🇪🇪 (92 points), maintaining their leadership positions, closely followed by Luxembourg 🇱🇺 (90 points) and Iceland 🇮🇸 (90 points). Other frontrunners within the European Union are Finland 🇫🇮 (88 points), Lithuania 🇱🇹 (86 points), Denmark 🇩🇰 (85 points), Netherlands 🇳🇱 (85 points), Latvia 🇱🇻 (85 points), Sweden 🇸🇪 (82 points), Austria 🇦🇹 (82 points) and Portugal 🇵🇹 (81 points). The EU27 overall performance averages at 76 points.
The best leaders in the other European countries are Türkiye 🇹🇷 (83 points) and Norway 🇳🇴 (82 points).

Source: eGovernment Benchmark Insight Report 2024

Not all countries in the EU27 are in the same phase of their digital transformation, which can be illustrated by the gap between the top 10 and bottom 10 performing countries. The results depict how the gaps between the top and bottom performers have evolved over the recent four-year period. Coming from a 28-point difference between the top and bottom performers, it now sits at 23 points. This five-point decrease between the average of the top 10 and bottom 10 performers reveal a diminishing disparity in eGovernment performance. The efforts that these governments are making is essential for a widespread resilient digital environment in the EU.

Source: eGovernment Benchmark Insight Report 2024

Within the EU, the total amount of online services differs greatly for cross-border and national users. National users can use 88% of all the offered services digitally, whereas this is only 56% of the services for cross-border users. This means that, on average, cross-border users are missing the availability of 32% of all their services in comparison to the online availability of national services. Over the past four-year period, this gap has decreased slightly, coming down from 35%.

Source: eGovernment Benchmark Insight Report 2024

Citizen services: Human-centered by design

We partner with public sector organizations globally to design, test, iterate and run digital services that put citizens at the center.

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Expert perspectives

Meet our experts

Marc Reinhardt

Executive Vice President, Public Sector Global Industry Leader
“We are proud to be a leading partner to public sector organizations globally, supporting mission-critical systems that touch the lives of millions of citizens and users every day. While developing the next generation of citizen-centric, inclusive public services, we are also enabling organizations to transform to tackle the most important challenges our societies face. As we look to the 2030 targets of the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, it’s clear that technology is a tool for achieving better outcomes, and that societal purpose should be a driving force behind the sector’s use of digital to perform and transform.”

Niels van der Linden

Vice President and EU Lead at Capgemini Invent
“Making it easy for citizens and businesses to engage with government increases the uptake of cost-effective and more sustainable digital services. Currently, however, many governments do not yet share service data, missing out on the one-government experience and preventing them deriving actionable insights from monitoring and evaluating the state-of-play. We help to design, build, and run trusted, interoperable data platforms and services built around the needs of citizens and businesses.”

Jochem Dogger

Manager in the Data, Research & Evaluations team
“The public sector is increasingly realizing the potential of the data it gathers to improve citizens’ lives. The challenge ahead is to keep using data in an ethical and responsible manner, while opening up vital data sources to citizens and entrepreneurs and facilitating interoperable data exchange between institutions. This will enable governments to realize the economic, societal, political and environmental benefits that data has to offer.”

Sem Enzerink

Manager and Digital Government Expert, Capgemini Invent
“Let’s shape digital governments that are well-connected. Well-connected to their users, to each other and to the latest technologies. Europe is ready for a new generation of digital government service to impact and ease the lives of citizens and entrepreneurs.”

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