Rating nations on a scale from 0 to 100, the study concluded that South Korea offers the best e-government services, maintaining its place from last year, with a score of 74.9 percent. Though 27th on the list last year, Turkey climbed to eighth spot this time around.
The findings are based on an analysis of 1,687 government Web sites in 198 nations. The types of sites evaluated included those of executive offices (president, prime minister, ruler, party leader or royalty), legislatures, major courts, major agencies and ministries. Other countries at the top of the list were Singapore, Taiwan, the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Portugal, Australia and Germany, in descending order.
Web sites were measured based on the presence of various features dealing with information availability, service delivery and public access. Some characteristics assessed included the name of the nation, the region of the world and the inclusion of the following: online publications, online databases, audio clips, video clips, non-native languages or foreign language translation, commercial advertising, premium fees, user payments, disability access, privacy policies, security features, presence of online services, number of different services, digital signatures, credit card payments, e-mail addresses, comment forms, automatic e-mail updates, Web site personalization, personal digital assistant (PDA) access and an English version of the Web site. “Where national government Web sites are not in English, our research team used foreign language readers to evaluate government Web sites. Among the languages assessed were English, Spanish, Arabic, Korean, German, Portuguese, Russian, French, Turkish and Chinese,” said the report.
According to the report, “28 percent of government websites offer services that are fully executable online, about the same as last year; 96 percent of websites this year provide access to publications and 80 percent have links to databases; 29 percent (up from 26 percent in 2006) show privacy policies, while 21 percent have security policies (up from 14 percent in 2006); 23 percent of government websites have some form of disability access, meaning access for persons with disabilities, the same as last year.”
Quelle/Source: The Journal of Turkish Weekly, 10.08.2007
