The E-Government within the Republic of Cyprus is quite functional in many respects but certainly not advanced. The Government has a very well prepared and updated website(2) created in 2001 that can be used primarily as a source of information to the citizens. However, there are neither capabilities for fee payment nor tax payment via the site. In this respect, the E-Government capability has room for improvement to bring the site up to a higher level of functionality.

The government does indeed have a few core systems of Civil Registry, Land and Surveys, Registrar of Companies. The core systems are linked through the Government Data Network (GDN) using a backbone of 622 Mbs speed and Government Internet/Intranet/Extranet (GIN). There has also been automation within some government departments in order for civil servants to access the above information securely. The Ex-Libris project supplied the much needed catalyst for the implementation of the Cypriotic e-government strategey. This project has a number of benefits:

• obtain a pilot project which can be used in forming the e-government strategy guidelines
• form and test the technical, legal and security framework required for integrating the
  government systems and generally e-government directives
• provide exploitation of intra-government workflow processes
• derive system requirement specifications for implementing a larger-scale e-government
  project

The Republic of Cyprus government devoted most of its time over the past two years transforming the completed information systems into web-enabled systems in order to give information to citizens and businesses and give government information services to the public via internet. (20)

Many of the same remarks hold true for the Republic of Northern Cyprus where they also have a functional website(18) with updated articles on current events. It serves as a valuable resource for citizens to find information but once again does not allow for any interactive electronic transactions such as tax payment.

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