E-Government—The Inclusive Way for the Future of Digital Citizenship

Abstract

eGovernment brings administration closer to its citizens and entrepreneurs, speeding up, facilitating, and increasing the transparency of administrative actions, consequently saving time and money and increasing efficiency. The study aims to explore the digital divide and digital citizenship in eGovernment usage in Slovakia and Norway according to their national statistics. The study adopted quantitative secondary data from Eurostat’s individual-level database, originating from the questionnaire ‘Information and Communications Technology (ICT) use in households and by individuals’. The analysis was applied to Norwegian and Slovak data from 2021, and the research sample consists of 2145 observations from Norway and 3252 observations from Slovakia. The results show that being a beneficiary of eGovernment services aligns with sociodemographic variables to a lower extent in Norway than in Slovakia. In Slovakia, the usage of the services varies not only according to the education of the user but also according to income, even if an individual has access to the Internet and sufficient skills. Due to the high level of development, and especially the inclusive nature of eGovernment, the Norwegian approach with the implementation of electronic identification (eID), digital mailbox, contact information, Altinn, and public common registers could serve as a benchmark for the further development of public digital services—not only in Slovakia but also for other countries. The conclusion shows that there is less inequity in the possibility to use eGovernment within individual social groups in Norway than in Slovakia. Norway manifests and emplaces strategies to guarantee critical judgment, ensuring the use of digital tools with safety. Slovakia, with lower levels of digital service users, tends to experience higher levels of digital divide which make the situation with eGovernment penetration even more difficult.