(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

The conference on the topic of "Inclusive e-Government" was organized by the Metamorphosis Foundation last week within the frames of the project "Western Balkans Network for Inclusive e-Government". The project aims at strengthening the cooperation and coordination among all the relevant stakeholders, decision-makers, government representatives, as well as representatives of the business, academic and nongovernmental sector in order to improve the quality and raise the level of usability and accessibility of electronic services provided by the public administration.

"Although the inclusion is characteristic for the countries with a more advanced degree of development of the information society, this does not mean that we should not discuss this topic in Macedonia and work on it, since our goal is becoming part of the European society", said Goran Manchev, adviser in the Cabinet of the Minister in charge of Information Society.

In the field of inclusion, as Manchev outlined, the Government is conducting projects, such as "Computer for Every Child", the vouchers for the students, intervals of free internet access etc., which, according to him, are an introduction into bridging the digital divide in society.

The executive director of the Foundation Open Society Institute - Macedonia, Vladimir Milchin, emphasized that the people working in the central and local administration should increase their knowledge and improve their skills in order to enable the users to increase their influence in society and in shaping the public policies by using ICT : "This means reaching the goal of having an open government and citizens who have access, i.e. coming to a certain degree of inclusion, without which the democratic, nor open society could not be imagined", said Milchin in his address to the conference attendants.

"Knowledge and skills are among the prerequisites for establishing an inclusive e-government into an information society. The digital divide is increasing. The gap between the people using ICT technology and the ones that are not is increasing. Therefore, we need to bridge the gap and enable inclusion. We are aware that if Macedonia does not perform well in this area, we will fall behind the European countries", stressed Marjan Gushev, board member of the Metamorphosis foundation.

According to him, the "e" in the term "e-Government" stands more for efficient rather than electronic Government, meaning that the Government's activities should be reorganized in order to result in providing better services for the citizens and businesses.

The second days focused on best practices in the e-Government. Most participants claimed that the region benefits a lot from the transfer of knowledge about good e-Gov practices from the EU, especially from Austria, Slovenia and Estonia, three of the five top-ranked EU countries in this area, according to Capgemini methodology.

On the other hand, reposts from different WBC pointed out not only to the low level of e-Gov sophistication (around 2 out of 4), but also to lack of interest in aspects of inclusion, especially lack of commitment in applying standards for accessibility and usability in existing e-services. Bardhyl Jashari from Metamorphosis Foundation emphasized the importance of cooperation between different societal sectors: governmental, business, educational and civic in overcoming these obstacles. He also pointed out that in the case of Macedonia, around 70% of the population does not use the internet at all, so in order to have truly inclusive e-society, all the sectors must find mechanisms to include this portion of population in the processes of development.

About 250 representatives of the governmental, nongovernmental, education and business sector from 11 countries participated at the conference that took place on 29-30 November 2007.

E-society.Mk 2007 International Conference
http://e-society.org.mk/portal/content/view/24/31/lang,en/

(contribution by EDRi-member Metamorphosis Foundation - Macedonia)