During the first half of 2013 two new members join the European Association of Public IT Service Providers (Euritas): the Bundesamt für Informatik und Telekommunikation - BIT - of the Swiss Confederation, and the agency for public IT services in Denmark - Statens IT.
Now, the association has 10 members from 4 EU countries that are going to make increasing use of their expertise in the field of IT and telecommunication technology. With the aim of working out recommendations for public services across various levels, the benefit for citizens, businesses but also for the administration itself is meant to be enhanced on a sustainable basis. One example is the Whitepaper on "Options for Cloud technologies in public administration" that was published at the beginning of this year.
Dr. Giovanni Conti, Director of the BIT comments: "We are very glad that by joining Euritas, we will be able to cope with the future challenges facing Swiss public IT services even better and more efficiently through cooperative exchange with other European data centres in the field of public administration." With a staff of approx. 1.000, the federal office of IT and telecommunication (Bundesamt für Informatik und Telekommunikation, BIT) services round about 25.000 workstations and a network infrastructure of 4.800 servers in Switzerland and all over the world.
Director Michael Ørnø adds: "Statens IT is responsible for the operation and effective IT support to ensure high-quality services for the Danish government agencies. The public IT service providers in Europe are faced with similar challenges. Moreover, the level of networking within the EU is steadily increasing. Euritas - with members from Austria, Germany and Switzerland - provides us with an excellent opportunity to exchange know-how combined with "Best Practice" experience within the European context." As a subordinate agency of the finance ministry, Statens IT provides IT services to 10 ministries at government level and to 11.000 users overall.
