Academic literature on the topic 'Technological innovations – Government policy – European Union countries'

This paper investigates how firm-level innovation and productivity affect the export propensity in manufacturing firms in seven Eastern European Union countries. With respect to innovation activities, we analyze the complementarity between pair-wise product, process and non-technological (organizational and marketing) innovations when the objective function is represented by the exporting probability of a firm. Analyzing CIS2008 data, we find that productivity always has a positive and significant impact on the exporting propensity of firms. Furthermore, complex innovative firms, when large in size and/or from medium high–high technology sectors, can take advantage in terms of a higher attitude to export than non-innovators and simple innovators. By considering these results, governments have to introduce policies that can induce firms, especially small and medium ones, to implement complex innovations. This is fundamental in order to be more productive and more competitive.

Green energy is regarded as the breakthrough of the fourth technological revolution of mankind, which is highly concerned by the whole world. By analysing the development strategies of major developed countries to promote green energy industry, this paper constructs a theoretical framework from four aspects: government policy, green consumption, technology and capital, so as to summarize the typical characteristics of the development of green energy industry. The study found that government policy and technology are the main driving force for the development of green energy industry in major developed countries, the resource-rich United States leads the industrial development with policy, and the European Union obtains new energy development through policy and technological innovation at the same time. Japan continues to innovate and take the lead in technology to break the limitations of innate conditions. The conclusions of the study will help countries with the same resource base, policy environment and consumption concept to sort out the development ideas of green energy, and provide some reference and reference for the formulation of effective development strategies.

Access to public health services is a cause that benefits the people and concerns the vital interests of the people. Everyone has access to basic health care services. The continuous improvement in people’s health is an important indicator of the improvement in people’s quality of life. This paper selects data from the European Union (EU) on aspects of public health expenditure, medical care resources, and government emergency coordination capacity from the period 2008 to 2017. Principal component analysis and factor analysis are used to measure their public health service capacity scores and conduct a comparative analysis. On this basis, the TOBIT model is adopted to explore the driving factors that lead to the spatial differentiation of public health service capabilities, and to combine it with the data of the COVID-19 epidemic as of 8 August 2020 from the official announcements of the World Health Organization and governments for further thinking. The results indicate that the public health service capacity of countries in the EU is showing a gradual increase. The capacity in Western Europe is, in turn, higher than that of Northern Europe, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe. In addition, the overall capacity in Western Europe is relatively high, but it is not balanced and stable, while Northern Europe has remained stable and balanced at a high level. Population density, degree of opening up, education level, economic development level, technological innovation level, and degree of aging have a positive effect on public health service capabilities. The level of urbanization has a negative effect on it. However, in countries with strong public health service capabilities, the epidemic of COVID-19 is more severe. The emergence of this paradox may be related to the detection capabilities of countries, the high probability of spreading thCOVID-19 epidemic, the inefficient implementation of government policy, the integrated system of the EU and the adverse selection of youth. This paper aims to improve the ability of the EU to respond to public health emergencies, improve the utilization of medical and health resources, and better protect people’s health from the perspective of public health service capacity.

Social innovations are activities aiming at implementation of social objectives, including mainly the improvement of life of individuals and social groups, together with public policy and management objectives. The essay indicates and discusses the most important contemporary problems, solving of which requires social innovations. Social innovations precondition the progress of civilisation. The world needs not only new technologies, but also new solutions of social and institutional nature that would be conducive to achieving social goals. Social innovations are experimental social actions of organisational and institutional nature that aim at improving the quality of life of individuals, communities, nations, companies, circles, or social groups. Their experimental nature stems from the fact of introducing unique and one-time solutions on a large scale, the end results of which are often difficult to be fully predicted. For example, it was difficult to believe that opening new labour markets for foreigners in the countries of the European Union, which can be treated as a social innovation aiming at development of the international labour market, will result in the rapid development of the low-cost airlines, the offer of which will be available to a larger group of recipients. In other words, social innovations differ from economic innovations, as they are not about implementation of new types of production or gaining new markets, but about satisfying new needs, which are not provided by the market. Therefore, the most important distinction consists in that social innovations are concerned with improving the well-being of individuals and communities by additional employment, or increased consumption, as well as participation in solving the problems of individuals and social groups [CSTP, 2011]. In general, social innovations are activities aiming at implementation of social objectives, including mainly the improvement of life of individuals and social groups together with the objectives of public policy and management [Kowalczyk, Sobiecki, 2017]. Their implementation requires global, national, and individual actions. This requires joint operations, both at the scale of the entire globe, as well as in particular interest groups. Why are social innovations a key point for the progress of civilisation? This is the effect of the clear domination of economic aspects and discrimination of social aspects of this progress. Until the 19th century, the economy was a part of a social structure. As described by K. Polanyi, it was submerged in social relations [Polanyi, 2010, p. 56]. In traditional societies, the economic system was in fact derived from the organisation of the society itself. The economy, consisting of small and dispersed craft businesses, was a part of the social, family, and neighbourhood structure. In the 20th century the situation reversed – the economy started to be the force shaping social structures, positions of individual groups, areas of wealth and poverty. The economy and the market mechanism have become independent from the world of politics and society. Today, the corporations control our lives. They decide what we eat, what we watch, what we wear, where we work and what we do [Bakan, 2006, p. 13]. The corporations started this spectacular “march to rule the world” in the late 19th century. After about a hundred years, at the end of the 20th century, the state under the pressure of corporations and globalisation, started a gradual, but systematic withdrawal from the economy, market and many other functions traditionally belonging to it. As a result, at the end of the last century, a corporation has become a dominant institution in the world. A characteristic feature of this condition is that it gives a complete priority to the interests of corporations. They make decisions of often adverse consequences for the entire social groups, regions, or local communities. They lead to social tensions, political breakdowns, and most often to repeated market turbulences. Thus, a substantial minority (corporations) obtain inconceivable benefits at the expense of the vast majority, that is broad professional and social groups. The lack of relative balance between the economy and society is a barrier to the progress of civilisation. A growing global concern is the problem of migration. The present crisis, left unresolved, in the long term will return multiplied. Today, there are about 500 million people living in Europe, 1.5 billion in Africa and the Middle East, but in 2100, the population of Europe will be about 400 million and of the Middle East and Africa approximately 4.5 billion. Solving this problem, mainly through social and political innovations, can take place only by a joint operation of highly developed and developing countries. Is it an easy task? It’s very difficult. Unfortunately, today, the world is going in the opposite direction. Instead of pursuing the community, empathic thinking, it aims towards nationalism and chauvinism. An example might be a part of the inaugural address of President Donald Trump, who said that the right of all nations is to put their own interests first. Of course, the United States of America will think about their own interests. As we go in the opposite direction, those who deal with global issues say – nothing will change, unless there is some great crisis, a major disaster that would cause that the great of this world will come to senses. J.E. Stiglitz [2004], contrary to the current thinking and practice, believes that a different and better world is possible. Globalisation contains the potential of countless benefits from which people both in developing and highly developed countries can benefit. But the practice so far proves that still it is not grown up enough to use its potential in a fair manner. What is needed are new solutions, most of all social and political innovations (political, because they involve a violation of the previous arrangement of interests). Failure to search for breakthrough innovations of social and political nature that would meet the modern challenges, can lead the world to a disaster. Social innovation, and not economic, because the contemporary civilisation problems have their roots in this dimension. A global problem, solution of which requires innovations of social and political nature, is the disruption of the balance between work and capital. In 2010, 400 richest people had assets such as the half of the poorer population of the world. In 2016, such part was in the possession of only 8 people. This shows the dramatic collapse of the balance between work and capital. The world cannot develop creating the technological progress while increasing unjustified inequalities, which inevitably lead to an outbreak of civil disturbances. This outbreak can have various organisation forms. In the days of the Internet and social media, it is easier to communicate with people. Therefore, paradoxically, some modern technologies create the conditions facilitating social protests. There is one more important and dangerous effect of implementing technological innovations without simultaneous creation and implementation of social innovations limiting the sky-rocketing increase of economic (followed by social) diversification. Sooner or later, technological progress will become so widespread that, due to the relatively low prices, it will make it possible for the weapons of mass destruction, especially biological and chemical weapons, to reach small terrorist groups. Then, a total, individualized war of global reach can develop. The individualisation of war will follow, as described by the famous German sociologist Ulrich Beck. To avoid this, it is worth looking at the achievements of the Polish scientist Michał Kalecki, who 75 years ago argued that capitalism alone is not able to develop. It is because it aggressively seeks profit growth, but cannot turn profit into some profitable investments. Therefore, when uncertainty grows, capitalism cannot develop itself, and it must be accompanied by external factors, named by Kalecki – external development factors. These factors include state expenses, finances and, in accordance with the nomenclature of Kalecki – epochal innovations. And what are the current possibilities of activation of the external factors? In short – modest. The countries are indebted, and the basis for the development in the last 20 years were loans, which contributed to the growth of debt of economic entities. What, then, should we do? It is necessary to look for cheaper solutions, but such that are effective, that is breakthrough innovations. These undoubtedly include social and political innovations. Contemporary social innovation is not about investing big money and expensive resources in production, e.g. of a very expensive vaccine, which would be available for a small group of recipients. Today’s social innovation should stimulate the use of lower amounts of resources to produce more products available to larger groups of recipients. The progress of civilisation happens only as a result of a sustainable development in economic, social, and now also ecological terms. Economic (business) innovations, which help accelerate the growth rate of production and services, contribute to economic development. Profits of corporations increase and, at the same time, the economic objectives of the corporations are realised. But are the objectives of the society as a whole and its members individually realised equally, in parallel? In the chain of social reproduction there are four repeated phases: production – distribution – exchange – consumption. The key point from the social point of view is the phase of distribution. But what are the rules of distribution, how much and who gets from this “cake” produced in the social process of production? In the today’s increasingly global economy, the most important mechanism of distribution is the market mechanism. However, in the long run, this mechanism leads to growing income and welfare disparities of various social groups. Although, the income and welfare diversity in itself is nothing wrong, as it is the result of the diversification of effectiveness of factors of production, including work, the growing disparities to a large extent cannot be justified. Economic situation of the society members increasingly depends not on the contribution of work, but on the size of the capital invested, and the market position of the economic entity, and on the “governing power of capital” on the market. It should also be noted that this diversification is also related to speculative activities. Disparities between the implemented economic and social innovations can lead to the collapse of the progress of civilisation. Nowadays, economic crises are often justified by, indeed, social and political considerations, such as marginalisation of nation states, imbalance of power (or imbalance of fear), religious conflicts, nationalism, chauvinism, etc. It is also considered that the first global financial crisis of the 21st century originated from the wrong social policy pursued by the US Government, which led to the creation of a gigantic public debt, which consequently led to an economic breakdown. This resulted in the financial crisis, but also in deepening of the social imbalances and widening of the circles of poverty and social exclusion. It can even be stated that it was a crisis in public confidence. Therefore, the causes of crises are the conflicts between the economic dimension of the development and its social dimension. Contemporary world is filled with various innovations of economic or business nature (including technological, product, marketing, and in part – organisational). The existing solutions can be a source of economic progress, which is a component of the progress of civilisation. However, economic innovations do not complete the entire progress of civilisation moreover, the saturation, and often supersaturation with implementations and economic innovations leads to an excessive use of material factors of production. As a consequence, it results in lowering of the efficiency of their use, unnecessary extra burden to the planet, and passing of the negative effects on the society and future generations (of consumers). On the other hand, it leads to forcing the consumption of durable consumer goods, and gathering them “just in case”, and also to the low degree of their use (e.g. more cars in a household than its members results in the additional load on traffic routes, which results in an increase in the inconvenience of movement of people, thus to the reduction of the quality of life). Introduction of yet another economic innovation will not solve this problem. It can be solved only by social innovations that are in a permanent shortage. A social innovation which fosters solving the issue of excessive accumulation of tangible production goods is a developing phenomenon called sharing economy. It is based on the principle: “the use of a service provided by some welfare does not require being its owner”. This principle allows for an economic use of resources located in households, but which have been “latent” so far. In this way, increasing of the scope of services provided (transport, residential and tourist accommodation) does not require any growth of additional tangible resources of factors of production. So, it contributes to the growth of household incomes, and inhibition of loading the planet with material goods processed by man [see Poniatowska-Jaksch, Sobiecki, 2016]. Another example: we live in times, in which, contrary to the law of T. Malthus, the planet is able to feed all people, that is to guarantee their minimum required nutrients. But still, millions of people die of starvation and malnutrition, but also due to obesity. Can this problem be solved with another economic innovation? Certainly not! Economic innovations will certainly help to partially solve the problem of nutrition, at least by the new methods of storing and preservation of foods, to reduce its waste in the phase of storage and transport. However, a key condition to solve this problem is to create and implement an innovation of a social nature (in many cases also political). We will not be able to speak about the progress of civilisation in a situation, where there are people dying of starvation and malnutrition. A growing global social concern, resulting from implementation of an economic (technological) innovation will be robotisation, and more specifically – the effects arising from its dissemination on a large scale. So far, the issue has been postponed due to globalisation of the labour market, which led to cheapening of the work factor by more than ten times in the countries of Asia or South America. But it ends slowly. Labour becomes more and more expensive, which means that the robots become relatively cheap. The mechanism leading to low prices of the labour factor expires. Wages increase, and this changes the relationship of the prices of capital and labour. Capital becomes relatively cheaper and cheaper, and this leads to reducing of the demand for work, at the same time increasing the demand for capital (in the form of robots). The introduction of robots will be an effect of the phenomenon of substitution of the factors of production. A cheaper factor (in this case capital in the form of robots) will be cheaper than the same activities performed by man. According to W. Szymański [2017], such change is a dysfunction of capitalism. A great challenge, because capitalism is based on the market-driven shaping of income. The market-driven shaping of income means that the income is derived from the sale of the factors of production. Most people have income from employment. Robots change this mechanism. It is estimated that scientific progress allows to create such number of robots that will replace billion people in the world. What will happen to those “superseded”, what will replace the income from human labour? Capitalism will face an institutional challenge, and must replace the market-driven shaping of income with another, new one. The introduction of robots means microeconomic battle with the barrier of demand. To sell more, one needs to cut costs. The costs are lowered by the introduction of robots, but the use of robots reduces the demand for human labour. Lowering the demand for human labour results in the reduction of employment, and lower wages. Lower wages result in the reduction of the demand for goods and services. To increase the demand for goods and services, the companies must lower their costs, so they increase the involvement of robots, etc. A mechanism of the vicious circle appears If such a mass substitution of the factors of production is unfavourable from the point of view of stimulating the development of the economy, then something must be done to improve the adverse price relations for labour. How can the conditions of competition between a robot and a man be made equal, at least partially? Robots should be taxed. Bill Gates, among others, is a supporter of such a solution. However, this is only one of the tools that can be used. The solution of the problem requires a change in the mechanism, so a breakthrough innovation of a social and political nature. We can say that technological and product innovations force the creation of social and political innovations (maybe institutional changes). Product innovations solve some problems (e.g. they contribute to the reduction of production costs), but at the same time, give rise to others. Progress of civilisation for centuries and even millennia was primarily an intellectual progress. It was difficult to discuss economic progress at that time. Then we had to deal with the imbalance between the economic and the social element. The insufficiency of the economic factor (otherwise than it is today) was the reason for the tensions and crises. Estimates of growth indicate that the increase in industrial production from ancient times to the first industrial revolution, that is until about 1700, was 0.1-0.2 per year on average. Only the next centuries brought about systematically increasing pace of economic growth. During 1700- 1820, it was 0.5% on an annual average, and between 1820-1913 – 1.5%, and between 1913-2012 – 3.0% [Piketty, 2015, p. 97]. So, the significant pace of the economic growth is found only at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. Additionally, the growth in this period refers predominantly to Europe and North America. The countries on other continents were either stuck in colonialism, structurally similar to the medieval period, or “lived” on the history of their former glory, as, for example, China and Japan, or to a lesser extent some countries of the Middle East and South America. The growth, having then the signs of the modern growth, that is the growth based on technological progress, was attributed mainly to Europe and the United States. The progress of civilisation requires the creation of new social initiatives. Social innovations are indeed an additional capital to keep the social structure in balance. The social capital is seen as a means and purpose and as a primary source of new values for the members of the society. Social innovations also motivate every citizen to actively participate in this process. It is necessary, because traditional ways of solving social problems, even those known for a long time as unemployment, ageing of the society, or exclusion of considerable social and professional groups from the social and economic development, simply fail. “Old” problems are joined by new ones, such as the increase of social inequalities, climate change, or rapidly growing environmental pollution. New phenomena and problems require new solutions, changes to existing procedures, programmes, and often a completely different approach and instruments [Kowalczyk, Sobiecki, 2017].

The increase in the concentration of the banking industry across European Union countries during the last fifteen years can be explained in terms of: a) global factors, like the comprehensive adoption of technological innovations, the intensification of competition that has resulted from the deregulation of the financial sector and, more recently, as a consequence of the government interventions and forced acquisitions prompted by the 2007-2009 financial crisis; and, b) factors that have been specific to the E.U., in particular, the structural changes that took place in the region as a result of the creation of the Single Financial Market (1993) and the introduction of the euro (1999). This work analyzes the concentration process of the banking industry in the E.U. during the last fifteen years giving preeminence to the strategic choices made by the region?s commercial banks. It also reports the most visible E.U. banks? M&As and government interventions that resulted from the 2007-2009 financial crisis, make a preliminary evaluation of the outcomes, and suggests possible future trends for the banking industry in the region.

THIS BOOK IS ABOUT MANIFESTATIONS of power in medicines and pharmaceutical industry policy. The main focus is on the Republic of Ireland but there are chapters also on drug regulation in Canada, Britain and Australia. The multinational pharma companies loom larger in Ireland than in most other countries; several chapters detail the implications for this small country of the presence of a major cluster of global drug companies. Globalisation is the hallmark of the drug sector; innovation and production occur within international networks which are mirrored by interaction between regulatory agencies which operate similar systems of control and monitoring. Since the 1990s, many aspects of product safety regulation have been standardised across the developed countries through the International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) process, sponsored by the regulatory agencies and industry associations of the USA, the European Union and Japan. While orchestrating vast scientific, economic and technological resources, the big pharma companies participate as insiders in national policy processes, such as those described in this book. Firms typically affirm a commitment to the health and economic concerns of the local jurisdiction ? however governments cannot help but be sensitive to their global reach and power to choose where to invest.

The article presents the main research results on the peculiarities of the functioning of agricultural cooperatives and the practices of state regulation of their activities in the countries of the European Union. The high importance of agricultural cooperatives is justified, first of all, by their multifunctionality, and, consequently, by their contribution both to the development of the agricultural economy and to the stability of rural areas. The main trends in the development of agricultural cooperation in Europe are: (1) the enlargement of the cooperative business; (2) the development of vertical integration along the technological chain, (3) all kinds of organizational innovations to expand financial opportunities, (4) strengthening competitiveness through the growth of the scale of activities and all kinds of innovations, (5) socialization of cooperative activities in order to improve the living conditions of rural communities. The specificity of state support for European agricultural cooperatives lies in expanding the range of mechanisms and instruments used by the state, providing financial assistance mainly to small regional cooperatives (performing functions important for rural areas), taking into account the possibilities of cooperative activities under extraordinary conditions (such as the COVID-19 pandemic or emerging natural cataclysms).

Fiscal policy influences economic conditions through public spending and taxes, generating positive or negative impulses, both on short and long term. The present research focuses on analysing the effects of the discretionary changes in the fiscal policy in seven post-communist countries of the European Union during the period 2000–2018. The autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) has been applied in order to obtain the convergence rates to equilibrium with a clear analysis of the periods needed to achieve the long-run fiscal sustainability. Also, the error correction vector model (VECM), which is based on the autoregressive vector (VAR) model, has been used in the second part of the analysis focusing on the Cholesky factorization of innovations. Impulse-response functions aiming to estimate the response of government expenditures to the shock produced by three macroeconomic variables have been identified.

The development of eco-innovation activities performed by enterprises remains one of the key challenges of sustainable development. In modern economies, the implementation of innovative technological solutions should also take into account performing eco-innovation activities by enterprises. The aim of the research was to assess the involvement level of small and medium-sized enterprises in eco-innovation activities, regarding the implementation of actions for the effective management of resources and the implementation of sustainable products, against the background of their involvement in innovation activities related to the implementation of product innovations and business processes, as well as the assessment of spatial-temporal diversity and trends for changes in this regard. The spatial scope of the research addresses 27 European Union countries, and the time scope of the research covers the years 2013–2020. The methods of multivariate statistical analysis, with particular emphasis on classification methods, were used in the research. The main finding of the research is the division of the European Union countries into three types of classes, including the countries assessed as: (1) poor eco-innovators and moderate innovators; (2) moderate eco-innovators and poor innovators; and (3) leaders of eco-innovation and innovation. The conducted research shows that SMEs in the European Union countries are much less involved in eco-innovation activities than in innovation ones; the level of involvement in eco-innovation can be divergent from that of involvement in innovation. Moreover, the involvement in eco-innovation does not show an upward trend.

Abstract In the article, whose construction is of theoretical and empirical nature, the author attempted to achieve the following objectives: 1) identification and critical assessment of expenditures on research and development (GERD index), expressed in euro per inhabitant, incurred by statistical units concentrated in the sectors: business enterprises, government, higher education, private non-profit organizations and jointly in all sectors in countries members of the European Union. The level and dynamics of these expenditures are treated as an indirect measure of senior management’s involvement in creating R&D policy and efficient management in R&D phases; 2) an attempt to verify theses that R&D expenditures are variable and diversified in EU Member States, which indicates the lack of a rational R&D policy focused on the systematic generation of new knowledge materialized in innovations providing customers the expected value in a systemic way; 3) developing models of innovative R&D activities management. To develop the article, research methods are used, such as: critical-cognitive analysis of literature, statistical-comparative analysis of Eurostat’s empirical secondary material, projection method. The level of the GERD meter indicates a significant differentiation of R&D expenditure in individual sections of the analysis. The member states of the old EU had relatively higher outlays for this purpose compared to the new member states.

Defence Date: 26/06/2009
Examining Board: Frank Baumgartner (Penn State University); Susana Borrás (Copenhagen Business School); Adrienne Héritier (EUI/RSCAS) (Co-Supervisor); Rikard Stankiewicz (Lund University (emeritus), formerly EUI) (Supervisor)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
The literature on the policy-making of the European Union (EU) has trouble understanding the long-term evolution of EU policies. While numerous accounts exist that analyze EU policies from a historical, analytical-descriptive and normative perspective, no existing account has studied the evolution of EU policy output from a positive perspective. This thesis wants to start filling this gap in the literature by studying the patterns of policy evolution in the European Union’s research and technology development (RTD) policy. This policy is studied at three different levels of analysis. The first level is that of budgetary dynamics; here I test two alternative hypotheses on the pattern of budgetary change, both derived from the American literature: the classical incrementalist hypothesis, and the punctuated-equilibrium hypothesis of Bryan Jones and Frank Baumgartner. The second level of analysis is that of agenda dynamics, where I study the pattern of issue expansion/contraction on the fragmented agenda of the EU, and test two alternative hypotheses on the allocation of agenda space to RTD policy. The third level of analysis is that of institutional dynamics; here I test the hypothesis that institutional stability is associated with phases of incremental changes, whereas institutional developments occur in correspondence with budgetary punctuations. The empirical results show that both the budgetary and agenda dynamics of this policy are fully compatible with the punctuated-equilibrium hypothesis. However, the hypothesis on the correspondence between budgetary punctuations and institutional change is to be rejected. The final part of this work investigates the mechanism and the necessary conditions for the emergence of new policy priorities, by focusing on the recent emergence of security RTD as a new priority of the Framework Programme. This dissertation is the first work to empirically test the punctuated-equilibrium model on the EU, with an extensive and original dataset composed of budgetary, agenda and institutional delegation data.

The G20 Moscow summit from 2013 highlighted the fact that human resource development remained a major priority for developing countries, especially low-income countries, with important impact on the priorities of other low income countries. When discussing about the current global economic development, about increasing economic competitiveness and reducing economic risks of global crises, we take also into consideration the role that governments and their staff can play in ensuring the adequate implementation of the various policy measures. In order for the government staff to perform at high levels of competence both in high and low income countries, especially in G20 members (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States of America plus the European Union member states), we consider that continuous education / lifelong learning would be crucial in providing an enabling environment, with e-learning holding a key position, as it enables people, civil servants to deal with future challenges raised by knowledge and information society. In the framework of the technological, normative and procedural evolutions that influence how the staff from public administrations works and possible openness towards e-learning programs, while aware of the various pedagogic, administrative and economic factors that provide incentives as well as drawbacks in using e-learning in providing training to civil servants, we are interested in analyzing e-learning programs developed and used for public administration staff from several G20 states. Our analysis will be focused on assessing the dimensions of the e-learning systems, variety of courses via e-learning platforms, methodologies used in e-learning, possible limitations and challenges in providing e-learning programs to civil servants in several G20 states. The analysis will be conducted using public information available from national agencies with responsibilities in providing such trainings in various G20 states. Our recommendations are oriented towards stimulating the development of an enabling environment for improving inter-agencies and ministerial coordination by intervening at the levels of human resources from the government levels. In this respect, we promote a wider usage of electronic means in lifelong learning for the staff from public administrations and the sharing of information by electronic means aimed at ensuring further human resource development from the public administration. Moreover, we strongly consider that continuous human resource development in the public administration apparatus from the G20 states and knowledge sharing would provide adequate framework for ensuring that government priorities and policy coordination in order to achieve global economic stability, sustainable growth could be achieved, while also contributing to the development of knowledge and information society and economy.