South Korea Best in Global e-Government, Says Brown University Study

Brown University's Taubman Center for Public Policy has completed its sixth annual analysis of online government services offered by 198 nations around the world. The researchers find that many nations are improving services and providing information for users. The United States ranks fourth, behind South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore.

Asian countries once again dominate e-government ratings, taking three of the top five spots in a global e-government study undertaken by researchers at Brown University. South Korea, ranked 86th last year, earned the top rank, followed by Taiwan, Singapore, the United States and Canada. The study shows that 29 percent of government agencies around the world are offering online services, compared to 19 percent in 2005.

The sixth annual survey conducted by Darrell M. West, director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy and American institutions at Brown University, and a team of researchers evaluated online government Web sites of 198 countries around the globe. The researchers evaluated government Web sites based on two dozen criteria, including disability access, existence of publications and databases, presence of privacy and security policies, contact information, and the number of online services. The Taubman Center released previous studies of global e-government in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005.

This year's study reviewed 1,782 government Web sites in 198 countries during June and July 2006. A variety of different sites were analyzed, including executive, legislative and judicial offices as well as such departments and ministries of the government as health, education, foreign affairs, interior, finance, natural resources, foreign investment, transportation, military, tourism and telecommunication.

Researchers found that 94 percent of Web sites have online publications and 72 percent have links to databases. Only 26 percent (up from 18 percent in 2005) show privacy policies and 14 percent present security policies (up from 10 percent in 2005). Software provided by the company Watchfire Inc. assesses whether websites provide assistance for the vision- or hearing-impaired. According to this software, government Web sites are still lagging on disability access. Only 23 percent of sites provide disability access, although this is up from 19 percent in 2005.

In addition to analyzing particular features, researchers rated countries for overall e-government performance. By evaluating the aforementioned features as well as others including PDA access, user fees, and foreign language translation, researchers rated each country on a zero to 100 point scale.