Preface
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Austria has been at the forefront for many years in the eGovernment arena. The diverse efforts and leading eGovernment initiatives of the Austrian Government have been awarded time and again with the top position in the most important eGovernment comparison on the European level. Austria‘s extensive eGovernment offerings led to it being declared the „European eGovernment Champion“ for the sixth time in a row in the EU eGovernment Benchmark. The www.HELP.gv.at Website as a „one-stop shopping“ portal and the application of the citizen card as a uniform system of electronic identification in Austria contributed significantly to its success. Entire procedures are able to be carried out electronically without changes in the type of media (e.g., switching between electronic and paper format), starting from filling out an application form and paying fees, to internal processing (Electronic File System “ELAK”) and delivering official documents and notifications. The HELP citizens-website has been offering online services according to the one-stop principle since 1997 and continues to successively develop new services. As experience has too often shown, paper files can be lost, misplaced, incorrectly filed, or land in a back corner of the archives. One of the most important developments of eGovernment for public administration is the Electronic File System, called ELAK. It enables seamless communication between public authorities and other governmental or private sector service points and shortens reaction and processing time by up to 50 percent. In 2001, the ELAK system was launched in all federal ministries. Since then, ELAK has been rolled out country-wide and is also being introduced step by step in provincial governments. The eGovernment Act came into effect on March 1, 2004. It forms the legal foundation for electronic procedures and simplifies electronic communication with public administration bodies. The “mobile phone signature” was developed with support of the EU Commission in the large EU pilot project on interoperability of electronic identities called