EDITOR Jonathan Lazar [e-mail]

population), so we might expect an increasing shift in the number of mobile phone applications in the next few years.

When More Does Not Mean Better

Despite a slow start, the offer of e-government services to French citizens has dramatically increased in recent years, covering all public sectors including education, health and social security, and justice. A recent study commissioned by the French Ministry of the Economy estimates there are more than 10,000 governmental websites; 700 of them are managed by the national government, while the rest belong to regional and local administrations [ 2]. However, the large number of websites does not necessarily mean better service to citizens, because of two main challenges: finding the appropriate service among such large number of offerings and having to learn how to use different websites. The same study reveals several problems with currently available e-government Web portals that make it difficult for French citizens to create an accurate mental model of services. For example, a citizen looking for further information to obtain an identity card might experience information overload as there are various websites that provide diffierent instructions—the city of Toulouse’s website, the national site for the Ministry of Homeland Security, or the website of its regional representative. In most cases, Web portals try to reproduce the inner hierarchy of the French state (city, region, and national levels). Competing e-government portals offering similar services create confusion. In the case of service-public.fr, which offers services to citizens, professionals and organizations, there is a personalized version, mon.service-public.fr, dedicated only to citizens. Both portals are interconnected, and as far as citizens are concerned, they offer similar service. Amazingly, both portals are designed as “unique” entry points to services.

French e-government websites do not present cross-consistent user interfaces, so citizens cannot apply their experiences across similar e-government websites. The adoption of standard guidelines could help to increase the consistency between the user interface of websites [ 3]. However, so far there is a lack of clear policies in France for guiding the development of e-government websites, and every agency and ministry, and the national, regional, and local authorities have all created their own standard for services.

A Highly Developed Sense of Privacy French public policies are deeply concerned with privacy and the protection of personal data. In France an independent committee named CNIL (the National Committee of Informatics and Freedom; www.cnil.fr) is in charge of overseeing the protection of citizens’ rights concerning the use of their personal information (e.g., identify, history of Internet access). Recommendations defined by the CNIL have oriented public policies since 1978 when the CNIL was created. The CNIL supports recommendations to prevent websites operating in France from keeping records of personal data (such as addresses and credit cards numbers) without explicit user authorization. More strict recommendations apply in the case of the creation of databases containing personal data, as no public file may be implemented without a prior favorable opinion of the CNIL. On one hand, this encourages privacy protection, but by in essence discouraging the development of centralized databases, the CNIL potentially hinders the government’s attempts at fraud prevention. For example, until recently, students applying for a public university in France had to repeatedly fill in the forms with high school grades. This situation changed a little bit in 2008 with the advent of admission-postbac.fr, which centralizes a student’s applications to university; there is still no automatic transfer of data from high schools to universities, but at least students must now fill in their grades only once.

[ 2] Amélioration de la relation numérique à l’usager: rapport issu des travaux du groupe “Experts Numériques.” February 10th 2010; http://www.budget. gouv.fr/presse/dos- siers_de_presse/100212 numerique.pdf

Cohabitation of European and National Public Policies As member of the EU, France follows EU directives, which often increase the complexity of deploying usable and cost-effective e-government services. National and European directives coexist in many different initiatives. For example, the European “data protection directive” (directive 95/46) of October 24th 1995 recognizes personal data may freely flow within the EU since the same rights and guarantees in terms of data protection and individual liberties are recognized to all EU citizens, in whatever EU member state they reside. Before making this directive effective on e-government services, every EU member must create national regulations or adapt existing ones concerning personal data to comply with the European “data protective directive.” Regular meetings among representatives of EU members are held in Brussels to

[ 3] Pontico, F., Winckler, M., and Limbourg, Q. “Towards a Universal Catalogue of User Interface Patterns for eGovernment Web sites.” In International Conference of the European eGovern-ment Society (EGOV 2007), Regensburg, Allemagne, 03-07 September 2007, Trauner Druck, 2007.

November + December 2010