UN 2008 E-Government Survey

The Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat has just released its UN E-Government Survey 2008: From E-Government to Connected Governance.

The 246-page document evaluates the "e-government readiness" of United Nations member states.

"This year’s e-Government Survey 2008: From e-Government to Connected Governance presents an assessment of the new role of the government in enhancing public service delivery, while improving the efficiency and productivity of government processes and systems. It comprises two parts: Part I presents the findings of the UN e-Government Survey 2008 while the ‘how to’ approach connected governance is the focus of Part II of this year’s Survey."

"The results of the global survey indicate that governments are moving forward in egovernment development around the world. However, given the high demands placed by e-government on a multitude of foundational pillars which include prerequisites of infrastructure, appropriate policies, capacity development, ICT applications, and relevant content that need to be in place to fully implement e-government services, progress is slow. Only a few governments have made the necessary investment to move from egovernment applications per se to a more integrated connected governance stage (...)"

"In an attempt to keep current in examining emerging issues, Part II of the Survey therefore assesses the challenges in moving from e-government to connected governance. The Survey postulates that governments are increasingly looking towards e-government-as-a-whole concept which focuses on the provision of services at the front end supported by integration, consolidation and innovation in back-end processes and systems to achieve maximum cost savings and improved service delivery. The distinguishing characteristic of the whole-of-government approach is that government agencies and organizations share objectives across organizational boundaries, as opposed to working solely within an organization. "

Earlier Library Boy posts about e-government include:

• 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."
• 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."
• More E-Government Rankings from Brown University Study (August 6, 2006): "The Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University, Rhode Island, have released their 7th annual e-government ranking for the United States. Researchers looked at more than 1,500 U.S. state government sites, plus 48 federal government legislative and executive sites and 13 federal court sites (...) According to the study, Texas and New Jersey are the best American states for e-government initiatives. The U.S. federal portal FirstGov.gov and the Department of Agriculture are the most highly rated federal sites."
• 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 (...) The document describes a number of justice-related projects, such as: The Electronic Filing System (Federal Court of Australia) (...) The e-Government Code (Italy) (...) Real Time Crime Center (New York City Police Department)"
• Governments Willing to Learn From the People on Web 2.0? (June 19, 2007): "The Law Librarian Blog, in a post entitled 'Government 2.0', draws attention to discussion in the UK of a new official report, The Power of Information, that calls on government institutions to actively engage with citizens who are out there using and inventing new interactive Web 2.0 tools."
• Audit of UK Government Websites: Lots of Room for Improvement (July 28, 2007): "Earlier this month, the United Kingdom's National Audit Office, the equivalent of our Office of the Auditor General, published its report on English government websites. Entitled 'Government on the internet: progress in delivering information and services online', the report to the UK Parliament found that Internet users rated government websites reasonably well, but that the quality of those websites has improved only slightly since 2002."
• Brown University 7th International Ranking of E-Government Initiatives (July 29, 2007): "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."
• European e-Government Awards 2007 (September 21, 2007): "The City of Amsterdam from The Netherlands, the Ministry of Government Administration and Reform of Norway, the City of Besançon from France and the Portal of the Federal Government of Germany each picked up one of the prestigious awards celebrating Europe’s most innovative public services. The prize for the 'Most Inspiring Good Practice' went to the State Police of Italy as a result of a public vote."