[1st-mile-nm] State and Federal Electronic Government in the United States, 2008

Thu Sep 4 16:24:58 PDT 2008

Surely of relevance.
-tj

Resource of the Week: State and Federal Electronic Government in the
United States, 2008 By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

http://digbig.com/4xkgk

We usually don't offer up a report as a Resource of the Week here on
RS, since posting reports is what we do on DocuTicker, our sister
site. But this report from The Brookings Institution came out just
before Labor Day weekend, when posting on both sites is traditionally
light, and we thought it was interesting enough to bring it to your
attention.

   The social and political impact of new technology long has been
   debated among observers. Throughout American history,
   technological innovations - from the movable-type printing press
   in the 15th century, the telegraph in 1844, and the telephone in
   1876 to the rise of radio in the 1920s and coast-to-coast
   television broadcasting in 1946 - have sparked much speculation.
   Transformationalists often claim that new technology will produce
   widespread consequences. Incrementalists, on the other hand, point
   to the influence of institutional forces - such as structural
   fragmentation within government as well as issues related to the
   investment cost and organizational structures of state and federal
   government - in limiting the speed and breadth of technology's
   impact on the public sector.

   This report assesses the nature of American state and federal
   electronic government in 2008 by examining whether e-government
   effectively capitalizes on the interactive features available on
   the World Wide Web to improve service delivery and public
   outreach. Although considerable progress has been made over the
   past decade, e-government has fallen short of its potential to
   transform public-sector operations. This report closes by
   suggesting how public officials can take maximum advantage of
   technology to improve government performance.

These key findings come from the full report:

   + Eighty-nine percent of state and federal websites have services
     that are fully executable online, compared with 86 percent in
     2007.

   + Three percent of government websites are accessible through
     personal digital assistants (PDAs), pagers or mobile phones, up
     from 1 percent last year.

   + Seventy-three percent of government websites have some form of
     privacy policy available online (the same as last year), and 58
     percent have a visible security policy (up from 52 percent last
     year).

   + Forty percent of government websites offer some type of foreign
     language translation, up from 22 percent last year.

   + Sixty-four percent of government websites are written at the
     12th-grade reading level or higher, which is much higher than that
     of the average American.

   + Seven percent of government websites have user fees.

   + Twenty-five percent of federal websites and 19 percent of state
     websites are accessible to the disabled.

   + The highest-ranking state websites belong to Delaware, Georgia,
     Florida, California, Massachusetts, Maine, Kentucky, Alabama,
     Indiana and Tennessee.

   + The top-ranking federal websites are the national portal
     USA.gov, Department of Agriculture, General Services
     Administration, Postal Service, Internal Revenue Service,
     Department of Education, Small Business Administration, Library of
     Congress, Department of Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board.