The UN Global E-government Readiness Report 2004 ranking system compares countries' e-government readiness and their extent of e-government participation. It placed the US at the top of the table, followed by Denmark.
It was put together by United Nations Online Network in Public Administration and Finance (UNPAN), a division of the UN that details the public policies, administration and services of UN member states.
Although it does not provide any further information on individual countries, its Web site states that "governments have made rapid progress worldwide in embracing ICT technologies for e-government in the past years. In 2001, the UN e-government survey listed 143 member states as using the Internet in some capacity; by 2004, 93 percent or 178 out of 191 member states had a Web site presence."
It continues: "Broad trends of e-government development around the world in 2004 reaffirm that political ideology, economic and social systems; level of development; resource availability, human and technological infrastructure; institutional framework and cultural patterns all have a bearing on how, and how well, an e-government initiative is utilised."
Research found that between 85 percent and 92 percent of all countries now provide a number of government databases, laws, policies and other documents online. And more than 75 percent of the 170 countries surveyed allow the downloading of documents online.
However, the number of countries providing public services online did not improve on a third from last year and progress in providing transactional services online appears to be limited to the more developed countries.
Talkback
Looking at the how various US states deliever public services has alarmed me over the way the initiativea are being used to secretly privatise ever more of their public services.
Various things from viewing public records to tax returns in America are now done almost exclusivly online in some places, but in many cases wheras the offline implimentaion is handled by the appropriate state department. The on-line implimentation however is often being handled by a contracted companies, under the premise that they have better skills and capacity to get the online projects up and running quickly at minimal infastructure costs to the appropriate state department.
Over the longer term however, as the online services become increasinly more important than the offline services. This has the alarming effect of effectivly privitise that public service, to the point that say public records become controlled by large companies.
This musn't be allowed to happen here. It is surely far better in the longer term if the appropriate public department develop and deliver their own online services rather than try and do it cheap and get a contracted company to do it for them!