IT tools supporting the functioning of enterprises have been present for years, and their use is constantly growing. They are appearing in smaller and smaller enterprises and are being applied in an increasingly wider range of business areas. Enterprises that want to operate effectively on the market use information technologies as support for their business processes.
As a result, B2B and B2C areas have seen many mature solutions that have facilitated and streamlined business operations. In the activities of enterprises, it is sometimes necessary to include processes carried out by public administration in their own business processes. This necessity arises from the obligations imposed by law on those conducting business activity and may concern both operational activities (reporting, informing about specific manifestations of economic activity) and long-term, strategic activities (obtaining permits, concessions, or even issues related to setting up a business). From the state’s point of view, enabling entrepreneurs to fulfill their legal obligations is perceived as providing them with certain public administration services. To streamline and reduce the costs of service provision by the administration and to develop a modern economy and information society, the development of electronic administration (e-Administration) is promoted, which consists of using information and communication technologies while simultaneously making organizational changes. As a result of research conducted by the European Commission, 8 public administration services aimed at business entities were selected, which should be made available in electronic form (e-services) as a priority. The most important ones include services related to business registration, corporate taxes, VAT, customs declarations, social security, public procurement, statistical reporting, and environmental permits. These services were also considered as reference services for assessing the level of e-Administration development in EU countries. In the latest report, Poland was ranked only 25th out of 31 European countries (EU countries plus Croatia, Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland) in terms of the level of development of public administration e-services.
It should be noted that the level of development of individual reference e-services for enterprises in Poland varies and results both from the funds that have been obtained for their implementation and from the IT maturity of the organization responsible for their deployment. Moreover, the chosen technologies are often extremely different, making it extremely difficult to ensure an appropriate level of interoperability between the provided services. It is no wonder that one of the fundamental reasons hindering the development of electronic administration in Poland is considered to be the organizational and legal framework of public administration computerization, which has led to excessive separation of systems and information resources. The need to overcome the barriers that have arisen in the development of e-Administration was one of the factors for launching the ePUAP project.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” No. 2/2010.