The ITAPA 2007 two-day international information-technology congress that began on November 12 in Bratislava under the title "Living Online" has brought fifty IT experts together to take part in panel discussions on issues relating to e-Government and the building of an information society.
Government Proxy for an Information Society Pavol Tarina siad that Slovakia's strategic plan to reduce red tape will be presented as part of the debate on a European initiative to replace general government bureaucracy with information and communication technologies. According to him, Slovakia still lags behind the rest of Europe when it comes to the integration of information systems into public life; mainly due to the absence of applicable legislation allowing the operation of e-Government via IT systems.
Last year, Slovakia was placed close to bottom of a list of 28 European countries ranked according to progress in on-line services, with Austria, Malta, Estonia and Sweden at the top. A poll carried out by the Public Affairs Institute think-tank revealed that only 15 percent of Slovaks actually know what e-Government is. TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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