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Story: British e-government hailed by UN
Posted by: Marc (Wednesday 12 January 2005, 4:10 PM)
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!
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