Over 30 Percent of Public Services in Croatia Available Online

24 May 2006

Last wednesday, May 17, the Central State Bureau for e-Croatia published, on the occasion of the International Day of Information Society, the results of the Study of Online Availability of Public Services for 2005.

According to the Study, by the end of last year, the citizens could access about 38% of the public services on internet, while the corresponding number of business entities hovered around 29 percent. This is a huge improvement over 2004, with four and six percent of services available online, respectively.

In more than twenty areas of public administration functions included in this survey, internet offers at least and electronic form that could be downloaded, filled in, printed and then submitted to the appropriate office. Only a fraction of services offers only the basic information on the procedures, while the number of procedures that may be fully completed online is on the constant rise.

The Study provides a comparison with the European Union, where the level of online availability of public services is almost double that of Croatia. Latvia is the EU country with the lowest degree of computerization of public services, with about 30 percent. In the "old" EU, there are eight member states with over 80% online availability of public services, while Estonia leads the way among the new members, also with 80% only availability.

These are, indeed, incouraging findings, but the question remains how many people and companies that could truly access the said public services? According to the info available at the web site of the e-Croatia Central Bureau, the number of internet users in Croatia, in 2006, was about 35%, while only 2.2% uses broadband connections. Practically, it means that a great majority still connects to the internet with dial-up modems and can use public services at a speed of 56kB/sec, which is only slightly faster than waiting at the office windows.