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Abstract
Since the late 1980s and the early 1990s with the advent of Information Technology (IT), there has been a lot of discussion on how and with which methods IT applications could be incorporated to the public sector aiming to empower its operations, simplify its procedures and optimise its services. Especially from the middle 1990s onwards with the mass development of personal computers and the rapid penetration of web tools and the Internet to everyday life, the public sector worldwide found itself swinging between the traditional way of doing business and the increased introduction of IT. From that point forward, there has been numerous synchronized, and not, efforts to move public administration operations to an integrated electronic environment within which citizens and businesses could access, interact and transact with the governmental agencies in a seamless, open, 24/7 and round the clock manner, the so called electronic government. In that scope, all governments worldwide have hastened into adopting the newly emerged e-government services, as they assumed that it would be the only reliable means of reducing bureaucracy, improving the effectiveness and efficiency of public administration, rationalise budgets, cut costs, better allocate public resources, increase the satisfaction of the public, and enhance democracy. However, this shift of operations to a full electronic environment implies an excessive use of personal information via electronic means. This by default denotes that the legislation must provide a solid framework, which will prevent any kind of abuse and/or maluse of personal data by enhancing their surveillance by paying attention to issues as data protection, privacy, confidentiality, authentication and integrity of information. For that reason, legislators have considered these issues to their regulations, and all e-government related laws have provisions regarding the surveillance of data and information stored and transmitted by governmental agencies.
1. Introduction
The introduction of IT into public administration for remodeling of the administrative procedures is under discussion for the last 30 years. Organisation theorists early
observed that technology could reform the way public administration operates by allowing managers to manipulate information much faster and more flexibly and by enhancing the control of their subordinates (Milward and Snyder 1996). At the early days each agency made its own provisions on the prospective IT applications to be implemented with financial resources allocated from their own budget. As a result, similar in operations organisations were found with different and often non compatible information systems, which could not be linked and exchange information with each other. This policy contributed strongly to the fragmentation of public information, amplified the isolation among agencies, rocketed the governmentwide budgetary costs spent on IT applications, minimised the interoperability among agencies, but mainly didnt improve the interaction of citizens with the government. Facing this technological predicament and being to the quest of cutting redtape and the costs of public administration, government officials decided to exploit the advances of IT into building an electronic environment which would provide a unified access to all government services breaking the barriers of time, physical presence and geography. Namely, the era of electronic government (or e-government) had arrived. European Union (EU) provides a simple but serving definition of e-government as eGovernment is about using the tools and systems made possible by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to provide better public services to citizens and businesses, involving the rethinking of organisations and processes, and changing behaviour so that public services are delivered more efficiently to the people who need to use them (European Commission). The annual UN survey on e-government for the year 2012 presents the course of egovernment worldwide the last decade (2003-2012), which appears to be continuously upward (United Nations 2012, p. 14).
This diagram shows the continuous increase of e-government globally through the last decade with an average rate of increase 10% on e-government development compared to 2010. In regional comparison, Europe has the greater development climbing up to 0.7188 EGDI (E-Government Readiness Index), followed by Americas reaching the 0.5403 EGDI and Asia a bit below with 0.4992 EGDI having the leaner progress of all regions and being almost in line with the world average. The last two places are occupied by Oceania with 0.4240 EGDI and Africa with 0.2780 EGDI, both far behind from the world average and the rest regions. What is interesting is that Oceania had a strong beginning in e-government development in 2003, which was followed by a decline till 2005, an increase again between 2005 and 2008, and finally a steadiness of e-government development the last four (4) years. E-government is a multidimensional phenomenon as it entails many inter-dependable aspects political, technological, economical, social, administrative and legal which has the power to radically reform the way people interact both with public administration and their elected representatives. However, it is imperative to have both a solid policy and a legislative framework in which the intentions of egovernment plan should be clearly described and long-term measures should be laid out precisely. This framework must not focus on specific applications or services, but it should mainly provide the means through which specific applications should be developed spotlighting the attention on personal data privacy, systems security, records management, confidentiality and integrity of information, on what is considered public information and who can be granted access to it and under which circumstances. The implications of the transition from the paperbased to electronic environment should be thoroughly examined, institutionalized and set in force aiming to furnish and strengthen the surveillance of personal data, and at the same time keeping the balance between the degree of surveillance, political correctness and the social acceptance.
2. United States
The government of United States (US) is the biggest producer of government information worldwide, which has to be controlled, checked, stored and be available in every instance. This fact in accordance with its unique administrative format of the horizontal separation of powers (legislative, executive and judiciary) and the vertical separation of government (federal, state and local) induced further problems in information management. For that reason, they have been using the advances in IT for a long time replacing the paper-based system with an automated one, beginning
from the use of mainframes and video-text based systems to public websites and intranets, and of course e-government in all levels of government (Hagen 2004). All legislative provisions adopted the best practices of the private sector enabling agencies to manage their demands on IT solution more efficient and to incorporate them into their mission statements. Agencies must comply with a set of preconditions when introducing IT applications such as the involvement of senior executives to the decision making procedures, the appointment of senior executives as Chief Information Officers (CIOs) to evaluate with measurable methods the IT applications performance, the imposition of the much-needed discipline on the technology expenditure, the redesigning of the inefficient administrative procedures, and the use of measurable methods in order to evaluate the contribution of IT in relation to the accomplishment of mission results. Moreover, there are specific regulations concerning the importance of assuring and improving the security measures and privacy of data and information in federal computer systems (Mullen 2005, p. 583).
less by empowering employees to put customers first, cutting the red tape that holds back employees and cutting back to basis (National Performance Review, 1993). In order to achieve this purpose, certain primary objectives were set (Hagen 2004, p. 217): 1. Reduction of the budget process 2. Decentralisation of human resources management 3. Reduction of the procurement system 4. Modification of the Inspector General's responsibilities 5. Abolition of unnecessary administrative regulations 6. Strengthening of the states' governments and the local authorities and make them more flexible. From that point forward all the legislation introduced or amended is focusing to the introduction of e-government practices to public administration, and to prepare public administration to smoothly adjust to the new era and to accept the proposed changes.
President Clinton in 2000, which stipulated the interchangeability among paper and electronic forms in doing business giving the opportunity to the citizens to decide which version of government want to deal with, the electronic or the paper-based one (Fletcher, 2002).
3. European Union
By the end of 1990s, the European officials realized that the policies that would bring the EU in the first line of the economic and entrepreneunial global scene should be applied. By then it was common knowledge that the way to the future was the exploitation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and the Internet to accelerate the process to implement the new economy, an economy based on Information Society. EU usually promotes its policies via Recommendations and Directives that are not binding legislative documents, but instead they commit the Member-States to accomplish the objectives with means and methods that are more suitable to each Member-State. The main focus was to develop the necessary measures in order all Member-States to be able to reach a high level of new technologies exploitation, which will better serve and develop both national and European economies. Based on that concept, European Community since 1999 has institutionalized several initiatives Action Plans with guidelines on how this transition to digital era in all aspects of everyday life of European citizens should occur, as well as a number of Directives regarding data protection. This policy from one hand is respectful of the political system and tradition of each Member-State but on the other hand creates diversities and disparities among them.
feedback and dialogue along with the establishment of two-way electronic access to basic services enabling the interaction of the citizen with its government (Commission of European Communities 1999). In June 2000 the Action Plan eEurope 2002: Information Society for All was initiated. The aim of the Action Plan was to meet the targets set during the Lisbon European Council in March 2000 by adopting the necessary measures and with deadline for completion the end of 2002. All actions were clustered around three (3) major objectives: (1) a cheaper, faster, secure Internet, (2) investment in people and skills, and (3) stimulate the use of Internet. Again the action Government Online required the efforts of public administration in all levels to exploit the advantages of new technologies to make information accessible, where as Member-States were forced to provide generalised electronic access to public data and main public services, to simplify online administrative procedures for business, promote the use of open source software and electronic signatures in the public sector, and to ensure that all basic transactions with the European Commission must be available online (Council of European Union 2000). The ultimate objective was to remove all constrains hampering the realisation of a pan-european system of public services aiming in increasing efficiency of the public sector, cut costs of transactions, increase transparency and speed up the implementation of standardised administrative procedures. Following the Feira European Council, the Commission prepared the Action Plan eEurope 2005: Information Society for All to succeed the eEurope2002 Action Plan. The proposed eEurope 2005 focused firstly on stimulating services, applications and content covering both networked public services and e-business, and, secondly, addressing the broadband infrastructure by encouraging the widespread availability and use of broadband networks, and moreover the development of Internet protocol IPv6 as well as security matters. From egovernment point of view the proposed actions can be summarised to the establishment of broadband networks to public administrations, the enhancement of interoperability in pan-european level, and the immediate implementation of 20 basic e-government services utilising broadband networks and multi-platform access and re-organising the back-offices of public administration (Commission of European Communities 2002). In April 2006 European Commission published an Action Plan dedicated to egovernment exclusively, the i2010 eGovernment Action Plan: Accelerating eGovernment in Europe for the Benefit of All. This Plan was based and
harmonised with the objectives of i2010 Strategy by soliciting the acceleration of electronic public services development both in national and in European level, preventing the rise of new constrains on the single market due to fragmentation and lack of interoperability, extending the benefits of e-government across Europe, and ensuring cooperation in designing and delivering e-government services. The i2010 eGovernment Action Plan focused on five (5) primary objectives related to electronic public administration designating a detailed description and timeline to accomplish the objectives in cooperation of European Commission, the Member-States and stakeholders accompanied by periodic monitoring, evaluation, review and update of the actions. EU in the middle of an immense economical, social and political crisis put into action the initiative Europe 2020 A Strategy for Smart, Sustainable and Inclusive Growth with primary objective to achieve high level of employment, low carbon economy, productivity and social cohesion (European Commission, 2010). Within this scope, European Commission issued the eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015: Harnessing ICT to Promote Smart Sustainable & Innovative Government identifying four (4) political priorities as following:
1. Empower citizens and businesses. 2. Reinforce mobility in the Single Market. 3. Enable efficiency and effectiveness. 4. Create the necessary key enablers and pre-conditions to make things
happen. This Action Plan aims to a cross-border eGovernment services provided to all citizens and businesses by creating an environment that promotes interoperability of systems and key enablers such as e-Signatures and e-Identification, by strengthening the digital single market, and by complementing existing legislation in domains like eProcurement, eJustice, eHealth, mobility and social security, whilst delivering concrete benefits to citizens, businesses and governments in Europe (European Commission 2010b).
EU has issued several Directives on data protection, privacy, surveillance, retention and free movement of such information. The Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data or the Data Protection Directive regulates the processing of personal data within EU regardless of whether such processing is automated or not. The objective of the Directive as stated to Article 1 1 is Member-States shall protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons, and in particular their right to privacy with respect to the processing of personal data, whereas Member-States shall not restrict or prohibit the free flow of personal data between them. Among its provisions is the introduction of the three (3) principals of transparency, legitimate purpose and proportionality. Namely, the individual (data subject) should be informed when his personal data is being processed (Art. 7a), the data can be processed only for explicit and legitimate purposes (Art. 6b), and the personal data may be processed only insofar as it is adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to the purposes for which they are collected and/or further processed (Art. 6c). The 95/46/EC formed the basis for the data protection national legislation of all Member-States, but however as the technology rapidly developed the need for some amendments arose some years after its initial implementation. In July 2002 the Directive 2002/58/EC concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector or the Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications was issued to accommodate the new conditions as been formulated by the immense penetration of ICTs in all sectors. The scope of the Directive is to ensure an equivalent level of protection of fundamental rights and freedoms, and in particular the right to privacy, with respect to the processing of personal data in the electronic communication sector and to ensure the free movement of such data and of electronic communication equipment and services in the Community (Art. 1 1). Generally, it complements the 95/46/EC by expanding the regulation to a number of important issues such as confidentiality of information (Art. 5), treatment of traffic data (Art. 6), itemised billing (Art. 7), calling identification (Art. 8), location data (Art. 9), spam (Art. 13) and cookies (Art. 5 3). The 2002/58/EC Directive tried to ensure a technological neutrality of the rule of law aiming to retain the regulatory effect of law to a technological continuously evolving environment, whereas it amplified the protection of confidentiality by the separation between traffic data and location data, which are
treated differently (Mitrou, 2004, p. 371). The Directive 2002/58/EC was amended in several points by the Directive 2009/136/EC issued in November 25, 2009. In March 2006, EU introduced the Directive 2006/24/EC on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and amending Directive 2002/58/EC or the Data Retention Directive. According to the Prelude (points 7, 8, 10, 18 and 20) the justification for introducing this Directive lays upon the notion that the retention and processing of traffic and location data can constitute a valuable instrument to the fight against terrorism and organised crime (Tsolias, 2006, p.347). In short, the Directive provides that Member-States should harmonise their national laws with respect to the retention of data which are generated or processed by providers of publicly available electronic communications services or networks, in order to ensure that the data are available for the purpose of the investigation, detection and prosecution of serious crime (Art. 1 1), whilst this provision should apply to traffic and location data retained for both natural and legal persons (Art. 1 2). Member-States should store citizens' telecommunications data for 6 to 24 months stipulating a maximum time period, whereas the police and security agencies will be able access to details such as IP address and time of use of every email, phone call and text message sent or received with a permission granted by a court. However, the Data Retention Directive has stirred up several concerns and questions among the legal, IT and privacy groups Europe-wide concerning its constitutionality and the extent to which the Directive does not violate the Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. At the time of writing, EU is under the process of re-addressing the entire legislative framework concerning data protection and privacy in European Union. For that reason, the Proposal COM(2012) 10 was issued at January 25, 2012, after a long time of consultation with the interested parties, concluding in that EU needs a more comprehensive and coherent policy on fundamental right to personal data protection (European Commission, 2012). As stated in Article 1 1 this Directive lays down the rules relating to the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data by competent authorities for the purposes of the prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences or the execution of criminal penalties. The proposed Directive tries to provide a unified legal framework concerning data protection and their use for criminal purposes, and
simultaneously to quieten the questions arisen with the introduction of the Data Retention Directive.
4. Greece
Greece has since the mid 1990s proceeded towards catching up with the more advanced European countries in terms of using and facilitating the ICTs in economy, employment, commerce and public administration. As a Member-State, Greece has the obligation to conform its policy, regulatory and legal frameworks along with that of EU. In that context, Greek governments have been trying to develop the means with which the Greek public administration would enter the information society and egovernment era. The impetus for the use of ICTs in public administration was given with the 2nd and 3rd Community Support Framework. The efforts during the 2nd period (1994-1999) concentrated mainly to informational government web portals and to supply public administration with technological infrastructure in order for the employees to get familiar with technology and reduce the traditional paperwork. During the 3rd period (2000-2006) some, but not much, transactional e-services were provided by the public administration (Markellos 2007). The 4th programming period started with the launch of the National Strategic Reference Framework in 2007 designating the allocation of EU funds at national level for the 2007-2013 period. So far it has been the most promising in regard to the applications implemented and the remodeling of public administrations procedures. All of the CSFs comprised of several Operational Programs (OP) allocating the European and national funds to the projects. However, many divergences to the implementation were observed between different public organisations and agencies, mainly in the level of streamlining and provision of services to the citizens, whereas even the public services that lead the developments have yet a lot of way for improvement in order to reach the European mean values. The two (2) OP that contributed the most to the implementation of ICTs to public sector and the training of employees in using them were the OP Information Society (OPIS) and OP Digital Strategy 2006-2013. Both these OP especially provided for the implementation of egovernment and the re-engineering of public administration with specific measures and timetable. Equally important is the government-wide implementation of the Greek eGovernment Interoperability Framework (e-GIF), a policy framework determining the principles of e-government services architecture in Greek public administration, and aims to support the development and provision of e-government services to all levels of administration central, regional and local by establishing concrete
conceptual and technical guidelines on how e-government services must be developed, implemented and maintained, enabling the interoperability between systems, procedures and data as well as the availability and accessibility of information.
4.3 Law on Personal Data Protection and Privacy at Electronic Communications Sector (Law 3471/2006)
In June 2006, Greek Parliament voted Law 3471/2006 which harmonises national legislation with the EU Directive 2002/58/EC and amends the existing Data Protection Law. The Law 3471/2006 to each first Chapter (Art. 1-17) complements Law 2472/1997, instead of replacing it, by expanding it to incorporate the provisions of the Directive 2002/58/EC on the personal data protection and privacy of electronic communications in public networks (Art. 3 1). The provisions on privacy (Art. 4), rules of processing (Art. 5), treatment of traffic and location data (Art. 6), itemised billing (Art. 7), calling identification (Art. 8), and spamming (Art. 12) are based on those of the corresponding Directive, but at the same time are incorporated according to the Greek both legislative and social tradition. The second Chapter of the Law amends several points of Law 2472/1997 under the spectrum of conforming with the requirements as imposed of the new electronic environment and the penetration of ICTs in all sectors of life. However, Law 2472/1997 is still in force for personal data processing that is being realised by no publicly available electronic communications (Art. 3 1).
Conclusions
The advent of e-government made governments worldwide to rush into adopting its principles by introducing ICTs into public administration aiming to provide online, seamless, equal, continuous, horizontal, agency independent and qualitative access to services. However, the components of legislation, regulation, politics as well as the society itself should be kept in balance so as to provide access without revealing too much information on your subject data. On the front of surveillance, several efforts have been made in order to designate the legislative and regulatory concept with which public agencies should conform when designing and implementing IT applications. Most countries have legislated on issues as data protection, communications privacy, systems security, information management trying to on one hand to accommodate the introduction of the electronic environment and on the other hand to maintain a secure environment for communicating and transacting. However, there have been incidents where for the shake of preventive tactics, legislators and officials have gone one step further on
terms of which personal data should be retained and used, i.e. USA Patriot Act and the Data Retention Directive. The main issue for all involved bodies should be to find the golden mean between reserving the individuals privacy, enhancing data protection and providing a secure electronic environment which will guarantee communication without jeopardising or snooping around personal data.
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