Brown University 7th International Ranking of E-Government Initiatives

The Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University in Rhode Island has just released its 7th annual ranking of e-government initiatives.

The findings are based on the analysis of 1,687 government websites in 198 different nations. The types of websites analysed included executive offices (president, prime minister, ruler, party leader, or royalty), legislatures, major courts, and major agencies and ministries.

Among the major findings:

• 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

On a ranking scale of 0 to 100, the study concluded that South Korea offered the best e-government services of any country with a score of 74.9%.

"Websites are evaluated for the presence of various features dealing with information availability, service delivery, and public access. Features assessed included the name of the nation, region of the world, and having the following features: online publications, online database, audio clips, video clips, non-native languages or foreign language translation, commercial advertising, premium fees, user payments, disability access, privacy policy, security features, presence of online services, number of different services, digital signatures, credit card payments, email address, comment form, automatic email updates, website personalization, personal digital assistant (PDA) access, and an English version of the website. Where national government websites are not in English, our research team used foreign language readers to evaluate government websites. Among the languages assessed were English, Spanish, Arabic, Korean, German, Portuguese, Russian, French, Turkish, and Chinese".

Other countries in the top 10 were, in descending order: Singapore, Taiwan, United States, Great Britain, Canada (6th place with a score of 44.1%), Portugal, Australia, Turkey and Germany.

Earlier Library Boy posts about international e-government studies include:

• Canada Keeps Top Spot in E-Government Survey (April 7, 2005): "For the 5th year in a row, Canada has earned the top international spot in consulting firm Accenture's annual survey of government initiatives in electronic service delivery. According to the article in the Globe and Mail, '(T)he overall average customer service maturity score — which measures four aspects of service delivery, including how well governments are delivering service across multiple channels — was just 39 per cent. Only Canada has an overall customer service maturity score of more than 50 per cent'."
• International Conference on E-Government (August 3, 2006): "UNPAN, the United Nations Online Network in Public Administration and Finance, recently held a conference in Budapest on the topic of E-Government (...) When it comes to initiatives on e-government, various studies give Canada very high marks."
• Brown University 6th International Ranking of E-Government (August 4, 2006): "The Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University in Rhode Island has just released its 6th annual ranking of e-government initiatives. Asian countries take three of the top five spots in the global e-government study. South Korea came in first, followed by Taiwan, Singapore, the United States, and Canada."
• UN Compendium of Innovative E-Government Practices (June 11, 2007): "The Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat has just released a Compendium of Innovative E-Government Practices: (...) 'UNDESA has embarked on an ongoing initiative to compile cases of innovative e-government applications from all geographical regions of the world. This Compendium aims to promote knowledge sharing and exchange of proven e-government applications among countries to promote emulation and to reduce the costs involved in setting up completely new systems' (...) The document describes a number of justice-related projects..."