Secondly, ICT development leads to innovation growth in public services worldwide, which means that changes in public administration’s activities increasingly rarer show features of reproduction, and the public administration becomes ever more often a leader in the field of innovative services. In consequence, methods of a country’s actions and fulfilment of its functions are irrevocably directed at using such technologies, and adopt the form of e-strategy, e-policy, eregulations and e-services. With just a few exceptions, public administration in Poland has not contributed to increasing innovativeness and effectiveness of the private sector, but has been rather ball and chain. Communication between citizens, entrepreneurs and an authority takes place mainly on paper, and it is necessary to come in person, bring a form, sign a document, while in other countries, e-government bodies are available via a mobile phone. For example, would it not be easier and more cost-efficient for an entrepreneur, if such sufficed, to participate in a tender by submitting only a factual offer, and other documents would be automatically collected through communication between various public and private registers (such as the National Court Register, Social Insurance Institution, Central Statistical Office, the revenue or credit database etc.). There are countless examples where public administration’s activities might sizably increase the economy’s efficiency.
Failure to make progress in these areas may sizably reduce the economic growth in the years to come. These areas include, but are by no means limited to road infrastructure, volume and quality of spending on research and development or business environment in Poland, as can be exemplified by an average of three years that it takes to claim one’s rights before courts in disputes between business entities. These weaknesses of the Polish economy are well known and it is also common knowledge what should be done to eliminate them. It is however not the weaknesses that I intend to discuss today, as I believe that there are other and much more serious areas of concern that significantly reduce Poland’s economic potential. Lack of reform in these areas may deprive Poland of the benefits brought by globalization. Today, I would like to outline two such problems: •  First, for many years there has been no common vision of Poland and no leadership that could inspire Poles to pursue this vision. •  Second, we may boast our world’s best IT specialists, but we are still well backward in terms of e-government – according to the Capgemini survey from June 2006 Poland ranks third from the bottom in the European Union 10 . Why do I believe the lack of vision, lack of leadership and Poland’s backwardness in e-government to be major weaknesses that diminish Poland’s possibility to capture the opportunities offered by the global economy?