Austria’s 2023 E-Government Strategy

Austria’s 2023 E-Government Strategy is designed to modernise public services through digital transformation, creating a cohesive, efficient, and citizen-centric government. The strategy’s main aim is to improve efficiency, transparency, and accessibility across all levels of government through coordinated efforts between federal, provincial, municipal, and local bodies.

1. Vision and basic principles

• Vision: The strategy envisions a digitally sovereign Austria where government services are accessible, user-friendly, secure, and inclusive. Personal contact with government agencies remains possible alongside digital services, ensuring no group is left behind.
• Basic principles:
  • All citizens, businesses, and government staff should be able to access digital services easily.
  • There’s a strong emphasis on trust: services must be secure, reliable, and protect data privacy.
  • The once-only principle ensures that data submitted once can be reused across different administrative procedures.
  • Cooperation across government levels is crucial, aiming for interoperability within the country and the EU.

2. Impact areas

The strategy defines four key impact areas that focus on the specific needs of different stakeholders and system components:

• Citizens: Digital services must be simple, intuitive, multilingual, and available on all devices. Citizens should be able to manage their personal data transparently, and digital services should be available 24/7, across the entire country.
• Businesses: Businesses need seamless, secure digital services that enable access to all relevant portals, systems, and data using a single sign-on. The once-only principle helps reduce the administrative burden for businesses, while proactive services suggest relevant information based on user data.
• Administrative agencies: Government staff should benefit from integrated, accessible, and secure digital systems that allow flexible working arrangements and improve efficiency through automation. Data can be shared across agencies under the once-only principle, making processes faster and more transparent.
• Overall architecture and basic components: Digital services should be standardised, networked, and interoperable. Open architectures and European interoperability standards guide the design of future services, ensuring that services are reusable and meet the needs of citizens, businesses, and government staff.

3. Key initiatives

The strategy includes a range of initiatives organised around the four impact areas, with key priorities for each group. Some of the most significant initiatives include:

• For citizens:
  • Online citizens’ accounts: Providing citizens with personalised, proactive information and an overview of how their data is being used.
  • Video conferencing with citizens: Offering video conference options as a legal and organisational alternative to in-person meetings.
  • Digital identity management: Expanding ID Austria as a centralised identity verification system.
  • Privacy by design: Ensuring privacy is a priority in the development of all services, backed by communication campaigns around data security.
• For businesses:
  • Single sign-on: Secure identification and authentication across all portals and systems.
  • Streamlined data management: Using the once-only principle to avoid duplicating data submissions across agencies.
  • Proactive service suggestions: Automatically suggesting relevant services and administrative processes based on the business’s core data.
• For administrative agencies:
  • Interagency data sharing: Streamlining processes across agencies and avoiding media discontinuity, where data can be reused between departments and levels of government.
  • Flexible work methods: Modernising working conditions, allowing staff to work from various locations while maintaining secure, efficient operations.
• Overall architecture:
  • Linking service portals: Integrating all administrative service portals to create a one-stop-shop experience for users.
  • Joint architecture management: Ensuring that all digital services, from infrastructure to data management, are interoperable and secure, meeting both national and EU requirements.

4. Governance structure

• The BLSG Partnership is central to governance, bringing together federal, provincial, municipal, and local authorities to cooperate on the design and implementation of e-government solutions.
• The strategy emphasises collaborative governance: joint decision-making, standards development, and resource sharing across all levels of government.
• The BLSG structure includes:
  • Committees and working groups to discuss and control key projects.
  • Proactive communication: Sharing outcomes and progress widely, ensuring transparency and engagement with the public.
  • Standards and compliance: Agencies must adhere to jointly agreed-upon standards, with exceptions allowed only when new standards are being developed.

5. Key governance principles

• Early involvement: All relevant stakeholders are brought into discussions early to ensure comprehensive decision-making.
• Resource availability: Agencies must commit appropriate resources to key projects and governance teams.
• Efficiency: Focus on initiatives that are practical and have the highest chances of success, with a clear emphasis on real use cases.
• Active participation: Representatives must actively contribute to discussions, with a broad representation of both general and specialised IT personnel.

6. International context

The strategy aligns with EU standards for digital services and data protection. It also ensures that Austria’s digital sovereignty is strengthened through the use of secure, interoperable, and open-source technologies, enabling better integration within the European context.

7. Privacy and data protection

Data protection and privacy are at the core of the strategy’s initiatives, with a commitment to ensuring that citizens and businesses can trust government services. The concept of “privacy by design” is emphasised, ensuring that data protection is integrated from the start of any new digital service development.

8. Digital sovereignty

Ensuring digital sovereignty is a central objective. This involves:

• Strengthening the capability of government agencies to control and manage their own IT systems and data, without over-reliance on external providers.
• Promoting open-source technologies and solutions that support sovereignty while meeting user needs.
• Encouraging collaboration between government and the private sector to maintain Austria’s competitive edge in the digital landscape.