BIS Review 23/2006  1  In the new global economy, the public sector must be active and innovative, and it must support its citizens and business community. By way of illustration, the National Bank of Poland, as part of its statutory tasks and in cooperation with its partners in the financial sector, has created a modern payment infrastructure for large-amount (the SORBNET system operated by NBP) and retail (the ELIXIR system operated by the National Clearing House — KIR S.A.) payment systems, thus ensuring provision of safe and efficient services related to settlement of both types of zloty payments. The scope of services for the banking sector was expanded in 2005 to include two new types of payment systems for settlement of eurodenominated (domestic and cross-border) transactions, namely: the SORBNET-EURO system, processing mainly large-amount (interbank and customer) payments, and the EuroELIXIR system, which provides cheaper and more rapid settlement of retail payments in euro. The SORBNET-EURO system facilitates transfers of payments to the TARGET system, thus ensuring real-time processing of cross-border payments between banks in Poland and those in the EU Member States. Apart from Poland, only three EU Member States outside the euro area (i.e. Denmark, Sweden and Great Britain) have introduced similar changes to the domestic payment system and ensured a link to the pan-European infrastructure. No other new EU Member State has implemented such changes to-date. The ELIXIR system, operated by KIR S.A., is one of the state-of-the-art payment systems in the European Union.
Hence, the abovementioned services are becoming more and more decentralized, based on public and private partnership, and privatized. The development of information and communication technologies is another factor that has an impact on the functioning of the state. Firstly, it facilitates the switch from one-way communication channels to interactive two-way communication, which leads to, inter alia, greater activity of citizens and business community and better adjustment of services provided by the public sector to the needs of citizens. Secondly, the growth of the ICT sector contributes to increased innovation demonstrated by the public  2  BIS Review 23/2006  sector worldwide, in other words, altered procedures employed by the public sector gradually cease to be of a reproductive nature, and the public sector becomes one of the leaders of innovation in the services sector. Consequently, the methods of functioning of the state and performance of its functions are irreversibly heading towards the use of technologies and assume the form of estrategy, e-policy, eregulations and e-services. Therefore, we are facing the e-reality in which e-administration has its liabilities towards e-economy. In the past, the public sector used to follow the private sector and apply the best methods of organization management, customer relations maintenance and management or use of technologies, which all lead to increased efficiency of activities. In the contemporary global e-economy the public sector has a much more difficult and demanding role to play.