Development of electronic governance applications: policy and spatial correlations

Abstract

Public administration, in the process of adjusting to the requirements of contemporary economy is gradually adopting applications of Information and Communications Technology. This paper is both about the policy concerning the development of electronic Governance applications and about the way their use is affected by and determines spatial features. More specifically, what is investigated in the paper has to do with the relevant EU policy, the course and the level of development οf these applications in Greece and the geographical distribution of their use in order to detect any possible spatial correlations. Viewed as a whole, this attempt seems to be at a premature stage serving goals related mostly with cost reduction and the immediacy of services provision. The ultimate goal seems to be the contribution of electronic applications to the improvement of governance procedures as far as their democratic nature and cohesion is concerned. However, the policy and the mechanisms of achieving this goal are not really distinct. The flows developed by the use of the specific applications contribute to the mobility of services and they also affect space interconnectivity as they correlate with spatial features such as accessibility, multifragmentation, urbanity and economic function.