European Chief Information Officers focus on “Challenges by mobile”

eu2018at - CIO Meeting - focus on secure and user‑friendly mobile government services

The shift from traditional e‑government to mobile government (m‑government) is considered a particularly important issue in Europe. The Chief Information Officers’ (CIO) Meeting on 25 September 2018 dealt with aspects of central interest for users.

“It is a good sign that m‑government is considered a priority in Europe. In this area, too, Austria will proactively contribute its experience, best practices and expert knowledge to the European‑wide discussion”, said Margarete Schramböck, Federal Minister for Digital and Economic Affairs.

In several sessions, the CIOs of the EU member states discussed various m‑government issues such as infrastructure, security and usability. The results are definitely interesting and relevant and could be of use to all member states when developing their own m‑government services. The user experience with mobile services is of special importance for the CIOs and should offer a seamless transition to desktop services. Especially security aspects, such as two‑factor authentication, must also be a feature of mobile services.

In their conclusion the CIOs agreed that there is a clear trend towards “mobile first” when designing new services. That’s why it is even more important to endeavour to establish European-wide standards in m‑government, too. This would make it possible to provide seamless and, above all, cross-border m‑government services in Europe and, most importantly, would make government services a lot easier to use.

“For me, the focus lies on m‑government solutions. The Federal Government is working on oesterreich.gv.at, a secure, innovative and user-friendly service. The new online platform will offer users central and easy access to the most important administrative services. We want, however, to take our efforts further and already involve users at the programming phase of the online platform”, Federal Minister Margarete Schramböck stated.

The CIO meeting takes place on a regular basis and deals with central technical aspects of digital administrative services on a European level. Reinhard Posch is the Austrian Chief Information Officer, designated by the Federal Government. Reinhard Posch is professor at the Graz University of Technology and Head of the Institute for Applied Information Technology and Communication Technology as well as Federal CIO since 2001.