Regional Formation and Development Studies

This article briefly presents the history of digitization of public administration in Poland. Statistical data of GUS and Eurostat (especially from 2012 to 2016) is used, based on which the profile of the Internet user and his/her expectations for the authorities and experience with e-government are described. The author attempts to understand why citizens–internet users (including the unemployed) do not use the Internet. The author points out three IT projects that were implemented in the citizen services sector under the supervision of the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy. However, the first attempts at computerization of the administration were not effective enough and – as it could be expected – they were not cheap either. The situation changed in April of 2016 when the family assistance program “Family 500 Plus” was introduced. It turned out that with 2 million applications submitted, almost 0.5 million were received electronically, 95% of which were sent via the Internet banking system. The author concludes that the simplest way to popularise e-government is to combine Internet banking systems with state administration systems.