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Electronic Government in the News

Electronic Government in the News

Connectivity
Connectivity, one of the fundamentals of digital government, is improving in the United States and internationally. The U.S. Web audience is still growing and diversifying with sharp increases in participation by minorities and retirees, according to The Media Audit. Women now make up 48 percent of the total Web audience.

Fifty-one percent of African American households in the United States are now linked to the Internet -- a 35 percent growth rate from April 2000 to April 2001, according to a study by comScore Networks. Those earning less than $25,000 a year grew 28 percent in Internet connectivity. There are now 9.3 million North American residential broadband Internet subscribers, or slightly more than 8 percent of households, said Kinetic Strategies Inc.

Readiness
While connectivity is crucial, digital government and electronic commerce require much more. The global Economist Intelligence Unit assessed 60 countries in a survey of preparedness for electronic commerce growth. The survey examined the business climate, telecommunications infrastructure, online security, literacy and other factors. The top 10 ranked countries were the United States, Australia, UK, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Singapore, Finland, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

The IDC eWorld2001 study -- based on 13,000 interviews in 27 countries -- said e retailing is continuing to grow among brick-and-mortar companies, and Web revenues will grow from last year's 4 percent to 7 percent this year.

In the United States, San Francisco and Austin, Texas, came out on top in a study of the ability to make the transition to a knowledge-based economy. Case Western Reserve University and the Progressive Policy Institute examined factors such as the numbers of patents issued and dot-com domain names.


Regulation
Many jurisdictions and groups are beginning to view Internet regulation as a complex global exercise requiring cooperation on an unprecedented scale. Supachai Panitchpakdi, the former deputy prime minister of Thailand and the incoming director general of the World Trade Organization, emphasized the need for a "clear-cut framework of rules," for electronic commerce. Highlighting the need for broad agreements are a spate of conflicting laws and regulations passed at local, state, federal and international levels on taxation, privacy, intellectual property, free speech, pornography, gambling, spam and more.

The European Union is working on a proposal to tax digital sales made over the Internet, which could require U.S. businesses to charge and collect value added tax on music and software downloads purchased by EU citizens.

Crime is the subject of the Hague Convention negotiations looking to develop a set of international rules for legal cases. While the U.S. recognizes and enforces judgments by courts in other nations, some of our trading partners do not reciprocate. But some warn that the Convention could mean lawsuits against U.S. ISPs from other countries, especially on intellectual property and privacy issues.

Most states and many local governments have lotteries or some form of gambling. But the California Legislature has a bill to allow law enforcement to prosecute offshore and out of state online casinos, and New Jersey is suing three offshore Internet casinos. While California clamps down, the neighboring state of Nevada has legalized online gambling for its residents. The U.S. Department of Justice considers online gambling illegal. Recently, the ACLU warned of "massive government cyber-snooping," and a number of reports cast suspicion on the motives and intent of government with regard to privacy. A draft report from the European Parliament warns citizens to encrypt their e-mail if they wish them to remain private from the Echelon spy network, a vestige of the Cold War, operated by the United States, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. And the Bush administration said that it has no plans to fill the position of chief counselor for privacy, which was created by the Clinton administration.

Security breaches have also created problems for government recently. During California's energy crisis, crackers entered the computer systems of the Independent System Operator, the organization in control of the state's electrical grid. And a number of states, including Virginia, had their sites defaced by crackers.
Wayne E. Hanson served as a writer and editor with e.Republic from 1989 to 2013, having worked for several business units including Government Technology magazine, the Center for Digital Government, Governing, and Digital Communities. Hanson was a juror from 1999 to 2004 with the Stockholm Challenge and Global Junior Challenge competitions in information technology and education.