The European Public Sector Award (EPSA), organised by the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA) and supported by several European countries and the European Commission, brings together the official motto 'the best, most innovative and efficient performers from all levels of the European public sector'. EPSA acts as a consolidated excellence network of public actors whilst offering a learning platform to disseminate leading-edge solutions. Within this framework, Information and Communication Technology presents a key tool to stimulate transformations within public administrations in order to provide better public services. In fact, the European eGovernment philosophy and the EPSA purposes are quite similar, as they both promote the change of behavior so that public services are delivered more efficiently, more quickly and at lower cost to citizens and businesses.

European public administrations have implemented deep reforms to increase efficiency and effectiveness, reduce bureaucracy, simplify procedures, reallocate resources and increase overall quality of the public services provided. All over Europe, public bodies have developed institutional and policy frameworks to promote trust and transparency in government, enhance and facilitate access to information, create spheres of public consultation and ultimately seek to engage stakeholders in the making of policy decisions and/or the service delivery.

EPSA is a valuable tool to progress, a driving force to innovate and improve performance within European public administrations. This article describes the main eGovernment trends drawn from the EPSA 2009 applications, trying to shed more light on the current megatrends on eGovernment throughout Europe. The focus of the analysis has been kept on the reforms made to improve organisational processes within the public sector and to empower public services' users. Sources and inspiration for this article have been the EPSA 2009 publications (research report & catalogue), the best projects' full dossiers and the evaluation summary notes from the multi-step assessment and selection procedure