South Korea, Asia, Lead World in Global e-Government, Says Brown Study

Asian countries continue to dominate international e-government ratings, taking three of the top four spots in a global e-government study undertaken by researchers at Brown University. South Korea earned the top rank, followed by Singapore, Taiwan, the United States, Great Britain and Canada. The study shows that 28 percent of government agencies around the world are offering online services, about the same as in 2006.

The seventh annual survey conducted by Darrell M. West, director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University, and a team of researchers evaluates online government Web sites of 198 countries around the globe. The researchers evaluated government Web sites based on two dozen criteria, including disability access, the existence of publications and databases, the presence of privacy policies, security policies, contact information, and the number of online services. Studies of global e-government have been released annually since 2001.
 
This year's study reviews 1,687 government Web sites in 198 countries during June and July 2007. A variety of different sites were analyzed, including executive, legislative and judicial offices as well as departments and ministries of the government such as health, education, foreign affairs, interior, finance, natural resources, foreign investment, transportation, military, tourism and telecommunication.

Researchers found that 96 percent of Web sites have online publications and 80 percent have links to databases. Twenty-nine percent (up from 26 percent in 2006) show privacy policies and 21 percent present security policies (up from 14 percent in 2006). Software provided by the company Watchfire Inc. assesses whether Web sites 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, the same as last year.

In order to improve electronic government, the report suggests that governments take several steps to reach their full potential in terms of accessibility and effectiveness. The ultimate goal of e-government is to provide citizens with services, information and interactive features. To this end, sites need to be well-designed, easy to navigate, and accessible to a wide variety of users. The researchers suggest the following steps be undertaken:

• tandardize templates with consistent navigation
• have accessibility aids
• list when pages are updated
• organize pages by user type
• create "most popular" lists
• have an online services menu
• have interactive technical assistance.
  

In addition to analyzing particular features, researchers rated countries for overall e-government performance. By evaluating the two dozen criteria as well as other features, including PDA access, user fees, and foreign language translation, each country was rated on a 0 to 100 point scale.

Click here for a complete list of rankings.