The E-Government Rankings have been compiled by Darrell West of the Center for Public Policy at Brown University annually for the last four years. Whereas each previous survey represented a snapshot of e-government progress at a fixed point in time, now it begins to be possible to gauge the pace of change and to speculate on the underlying drivers for e-government adoption in specific countries and regions. Of interest to readers of Public Sector Technology & Management is the fact that for the first time, not only do Asian economies occupy the top two positions, but in addition half of the top ten e-governments come from the wider Asia Pacific region. Judging from this survey at least, Asian e-governance has arrived.
What the survey surveys
The E-Government Rankings is not intended to be a qualitative assessment of the effectiveness of service delivery, or the accessibility of government. It is a quantitative gauge of the volume of agencies deploying information online.
For example it is highly unlikely that the e-government service levels in Iraq are comparable to those of the United Kingdom, though in this survey Iraq is ranked four places higher. Likewise this survey does not quantify the degree of citizen participation in the services offered.
However the sheer breadth of the study makes it a valuable indicator. Raw data, in aggregate, generally correlates with e-government activity on the ground. The report draws upon a detailed analysis of 1935 government websites in 198 different economies, and this research sample is recent - it took place this summer (June-August).
E-government consolidation?
This year's research has found that the pace of progress has slowed to an 'incremental pace'. But far from taking this as a negative indicator, a more likely interpretation is that governments in the region and globally have now established e-government deployment models. What remains is a period of incremental improvement and consolidation - ensuring that the end-user citizens make use of what enlightened e-governments have provided.
Another reason for the slowing pace of e-government roll-out is that the initial steps are easier than the successive ones. We are now at the stage where e-government, if it is to deliver, will entail the progressive rationalisation of 'pre-E' bureaucratic processes.
"Governments are showing steady progress on several important dimensions, but not major leaps forward," says West. "On several key indicators, e-government performance is edging up. However, movement forward has not been more extensive in some areas because budget, bureaucratic, and institutional forces have limited the extent to which the public sector has incorporated technology into their mission."
For e-government (and therefore government) to prosper, civil administration in the region will need to embrace technology as an agent of change. The e-government genie has come out of the bottle; there's no going back.
E-Government Rankings: The Asian Top 10
- Taiwan
- Singapore
- China
- Australia
- Iraq
- Hong Kong
- New Zealand
- Bahrain
- Indonesia
- Japan
E-Government Rankings: The Global Top 20
- Taiwan
- Singapore
- United States
- Canada
- Monaco
- China
- Australia
- Togo
- Germany
- Iraq
- Hong Kong
- New Zealand
- Italy
- United Kingdom
- Liechtenstein
- Bahrain
- Dominica
- France
- Israel
- Marshall Islands
Autor: James Smith
Quelle:Public Sector Technology & Management, 20.09.2004
