DEVELOPMENT OF THE E-GOVERNMENT MARKET IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: AN ANALYSIS OF THE SUPPLY VERSUS DEMAND SIDES

E-government represents one of the most palpable results of the dynamic development of the information and communication technology. Defined mostly as an intensive use of information technologies to provide public services, e-government has been approached in the literature rather from a technological perspective, with a significant importance given to the supply and a lower attention paid to the demand side. The increasing interest in taking into consideration the demand side in the development of the e-government initiatives and projects has created the foundation for a shift in the way the conceptual framework for e-government planning and implementation is defined, from the technology infrastructure and costs to the customer-centric character of all the efforts done. The European Union put e-government on its agenda aiming to improve access to the public information and services, increase transparency of public administration, exploit effectively the information technology within public administration, and establishing e-procurement. The development of the e-government services in the Member States, as it is expressed by the data regarding the supply and demand side, has been conducted in a more or less different manner that led, at the Union's level, to a relatively high availability but a rather low usage of the specific services. The paper explores the relationship between the e-government supply and demand based on the secondary data referring to the public services available to the citizens (as these are defined by the Eurostat methodology) and the usage of these services by the individuals, integrating them through an analytical matrix inspired by the BCG model. Probably the most important conclusion of this analysis states that development of the e-government services has not been accompanied by measures meant to stimulate their usage in the most of the European Union Member States. The analytical matrix allowed also the identification of the question mark, star, cash cow and dog Member States in terms of the e-government market development.