Delaware and Michigan Best in e-Government, Says Brown University Study

Delaware and Michigan are the best states for e-government in the United States, according to the eighth annual e-government analysis conducted by researchers at Brown University. The federal portal USA.gov and the Department of Agriculture are the most highly rated federal sites.

Darrell M. West, director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University, and a team of researchers examined 1,548 state and federal sites. The researchers analyzed 1,487 state Web sites (an average of 30 sites per state), plus 48 federal government legislative and executive sites and 13 federal court sites. Research was completed during June and July 2007. This series of e-government studies has been released annually since 2000.

Web sites are evaluated for the presence of various electronic features, such as online publications, databases, audio clips, video clips, foreign language content, translation services, advertisements, premium fees, user payments or fees, disability access, privacy policy, security policy, online services, digital signatures, credit card payments, e-mail addresses, comment forms, automatic e-mail updates, Web site personalization, PDA accessibility, and readability level.

Citizens are being asked to shoulder more of the cost of providing online services, the survey found. Seventeen percent of sites charge visitors a fee to use online services, up from 12 percent last year. In terms of online services, 86 percent of state and federal sites have services that are fully executable online, up from 77 percent last year. In addition, a growing number of sites offer privacy and security policy statements. This year, 73 percent have some form of privacy policy on their site, up from 71 percent in 2006. Fifty-two percent now have a visible security policy, down from 63 percent last year. Twenty-two percent of sites offer some type of foreign language translation.

In terms of disability access for the visually impaired, automated Bobby software, available from Watchfire Inc., found that 54 percent of federal sites and 46 percent of state sites meet the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) disability guidelines. The federal numbers are the same as last year, while the state numbers are up from 43 percent.