by Darrell M. West, 67 George St., Center for Public Policy, Brown University

Providence, Rhode Island 02912-1977 United States

Darrell_West@brown.edu

September, 2002

Executive Summary

A Note on Methodology

Overview of Global E-Government

Online Information

Services Provided

Services by Top Nations

Privacy and Security

Security by Top Nations

Privacy by Top Nations

Disability Access

Foreign Language Access

Ads, User Fees, and Premium Fees

Restricted Areas

Public Outreach

Email Responsiveness

Top E-Government Countries

Differences by Region of World

Conclusions

Appendix

Table A-1 E-Government Rankings by Country, 2002

Table A-2 E-Government Country Ratings, 2001 and 2002

Table A-3 Individual Country Profiles for Services, Privacy, Security, and Disability Access, 2002

Table A-4 Individual Country Profiles for Foreign Language Translation, and Ads, 2002

Table A-5 Best Practices of Top Government Sites, 2002

This report presents the second annual update on global e-government, i.e., the delivery of public sector information and online services through the Internet. Many governmental units across the world have embraced the digital revolution and placed a wide range of materials on the web from publications to databases. Since global e-government still is in its infancy, it is a perfect time to measure the extent of web service delivery, compare differences that exist across nations, and see how the 2002 results compare to 2001.

In this report, we study the features that are available online at national government websites. Using a detailed analysis of 1,197 government websites in 198 different nations, we measure the information and services that are online, chart the variations that exist across countries, and discuss how e-government sites vary by region of the world.

In general, we found that e-government has shown improvements over the previous year. Every region of the world has improved its e-government performance on nearly every indicator. However, there are continuing problems in the areas of privacy and security that need to be addressed. We close our report by making several practical suggestions for improving the delivery of government information and services over the Internet.

In our analysis of websites, we looked for material that would aid an average citizen logging onto a governmental site. This included contact information that would enable a citizen to find out who to call or write at an agency to resolve a problem, material on information, services, and databases, features that would facilitate e-government access by special populations such as the disabled and non-native language speakers, interactive features that would facilitate outreach to the public, and visible statements that would reassure citizens worried about privacy and security over the Internet. During the course of our study, we looked at a wide variety of political and economic systems, from monarchies, federated systems, and presidential democracies to parliamentary systems, dictatorships, and communist countries. In each system analyzed, we employed the same type of criteria in order to be able to compare the results across countries.

The data for our analysis consisted of two sources. First, we undertook an assessment of 1,197 national government websites for the 198 nations around the world (see Appendix for the full list of countries). We analyzed a range of sites within each country to get a full sense of what is available in particular nations. Among the sites analyzed were those of executive offices (such as a president, prime minister, ruler, party leader, or royalty), legislative offices (such as Congress, Parliament, or People's Assemblies), judicial offices (such as major national courts), Cabinet offices, and major agencies serving crucial functions of government, such as health, human services, taxation, education, interior, economic development, administration, natural resources, foreign affairs, foreign investment, transportation, military, tourism, and business regulation. Websites for subnational units, obscure boards and commissions, local government, regional units, and municipal offices were not included in this study. The analysis was undertaken during June and July, 2002 at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Tabulation for this project was completed by Aiko Wakao, Jason Holman, Marilia Ribeiro, Umut Ones, Irina Paley, Bill Heil, Josh Loh, and Yen-Ling Chang. National government website addresses can be found at www.InsidePolitics.org/world.html.

The regional breakdowns for the websites we studied were 24 percent from Western European countries, followed by 17 percent from Asia, 14 percent from Africa, 8 percent Eastern Europe, 8 percent the Middle East, 7 percent from Central America, 7 percent Russia and Central Asia (such as the areas of the former Soviet Union), 6 percent North America (which included Canada, the United States, and Mexico), 4 percent South America, and 4 percent Pacific Ocean countries (meaning those off the continent of Asia).

Regardless of the type of system or cultural background of a country, websites were evaluated for the presence of various features dealing with information availability, service delivery, and public access. Features assessed included the name of the nation, region of the world, and having the following features: office phone number, office address, online publications, online database, external links to non-governmental sites, audio clips, video clips, non-native languages or foreign language translation, commercial advertising, premium fees, restricted areas, user payments, disability access, privacy policy, security features, presence of online services, number of different services, links to a government services portal, digital signatures, credit card payments, email address, search capability, comment form or chat-room, broadcast of events, automatic email updates, website personalization, and an English version of the website.

For e-government service delivery, we looked at the number and type of online services offered. Features were defined as services only if the entire transaction could occur online. If a citizen had to print out a form and then mail it back to the agency to obtain the service, we did not count that as a service that could be fully executed online. Searchable databases counted as services only if they involved accessing information that resulted in a specific government service response.

Where national government websites were not in English, our research team employed foreign language readers who translated and evaluated national government websites. In some cases, we have made use of foreign language translation software available online through http://babelfish.altavista.com. Some of the non-English websites were assessed in part through English translations of portions of the websites.

In addition, we undertook an email responsiveness test in which we sent the following email, "I would like to know what hours your agency is open during the week. Thanks for your help." Email responses were recorded based on whether the office responded with an answer to the question and how long it took for each agency to respond in business days. This test was designed to measure public sector responsiveness to email questions.

There were several important new developments in global e-government over the past year. In terms of information availability, many countries have made considerable progress at putting publications, forms, and databases online for citizen access. Government agencies have discovered that it is very efficient for the general public to be able to download common documents rather than having to visit or call the particular agency.

However, many countries have not made similar progress in placing official government services online. There is wide variation across countries and by region of the world in the extent to which citizens can access government services through the Internet. While some governments offices offer services online, most (88 percent) do not.

In terms of foreign language translation, non-English speaking countries in Asia and Europe have more English translations of their websites than those countries in Africa and Latin America. Developing countries tend to target foreign visitors and international investment possibilities more than domestic users on their websites. This is illustrated by the fact that tourism and foreign affairs websites often are much better developed than government offices serving domestic clienteles.

Many global sites do not present many visible safeguards in terms of privacy, security, copyright, or other legal notices regarding displayed information. Despite the risks of hackers, cyber-attacks, and compromised security, there remains a need for continuing advancement in these areas. In addition, compared to commercial websites, the public sector lags the private sector in making full use of the technological power of the Internet to improve the lives of citizens and enhance the performance of governmental units. In general, national government websites do not take advantage of the interactive and two-way communications features of the Internet.

The regions of the world that have made the greatest progress on e-government are those in North America, Asia, and Europe. Reflecting the values of those areas, countries in these locales tend to utilize more advanced technology and put more information online. However, nearly every country needs to work to insure easier navigation, more common designs, and more standardized features in order to make it easy for citizens to move from site to site.

In looking at specific features of government websites, we wanted to see how much material was available that would help citizens contact government agencies and navigate websites. In general, contact information is quite prevalent, and there were improvements over the 2001 results. The vast majority of sites provide their department's telephone number (77 percent) and mailing address (77 percent). These are materials that would help an ordinary citizen needing to contact a government agency reach that office.

In terms of the content of online material, many agencies have made extensive progress at placing information online for public access. Seventy-seven percent of government websites around the world offered publications that a citizen could access, and 83 percent (up from 41 percent in 2001) provided databases. Eighty-two percent had links to external, non-governmental sites where a citizen could turn for additional information, which is up from 42 percent in 2001.

As a sign of the early stage of global e-government, most public sector websites do not incorporate audio clips or video clips on their official sites. Despite the fact that these are becoming much more common features of e-commerce and private sector enterprise, only 8 percent of government websites provided audio clips and 15 percent have video clips (up from 4 percent in 2001). A common type of audio clip was a national anthem or a musical selection

Fully executable, online service delivery benefits both government and its constituents. In the long run, such services have the potential to lower the costs of service delivery and make services more widely accessible to the general public, because they no longer have to visit, write, or call an agency in order to execute a specific service. As more and more services are put online, e-government will revolutionize the relationship between government and citizens.

Of the websites examined around the world, however, only 12 percent offer services that are fully executable online, which is up from 8 percent in 2001. Of this group, 7 percent offer one service, 2 percent have two services, and three percent have three or more services. Eighty-eight percent have no online services.

The most frequently found service on government websites was ordering publications, followed by travel reservations, searching and applying for jobs, applying for passports, and renewing vehicle licenses.

North America (including the United States, Canada, and Mexico) is the area offering the highest percentage of online services. Forty-one percent (up from 28 percent in 2001) had fully executable, online services. This was followed by Asia (26 percent), the Middle East (15 percent), the Pacific Ocean islands (14 percent), and Western Europe (10 percent). Only 1 percent in Russia/Central Asia and 2 percent of sites in Eastern Europe and Africa offered online government services.

One of the features that has slowed the development of online services has been an inability to use credit cards and digital signatures on financial transactions. On commercial sites, it is becoming a more common practice to offer goods and services online for purchase through the use of credit cards. However, of the government websites analyzed, only 1 percent accepted credit cards and two-tenths of 1 percent allowed digital signatures for financial transactions (both the same as last year). Among the sites having a capacity for digital signatures were the Singapore governmental portal and Japan's Public Management office.

Of the 198 nations analyzed, there is wide variance in the percentage of government sites with online services. The Bahamas, Vanuatu, Chile, and South Korea are first, with 100 percent of their websites providing some type of service, followed by Taiwan (74 percent), China (53 percent), North Korea (50 percent), Germany (47 percent), Hong Kong (44 percent), the United States (44 percent), and Australia (43 percent). It is important to keep in mind that our definition of services included only those services that were fully executable online. If a citizen had to print out a form and mail or take it to a government agency to execute the service, we did not count that as an online service.

Public opinion surveys in various countries place concerns over privacy and security at the top of the list of citizen worries about e-government. Having visible statements outlining what the site is doing on privacy and security are valuable assets for reassuring a fearful population and encouraging citizens to make use of e-government services and information. However, few global e-government sites offer policy statements dealing with these topics. Only 14 percent (up from 6 percent in 2001) of examined sites have some form of privacy policy on their site, and 9 percent have a visible security policy. Both of these are areas that government officials need to take much more seriously. Unless ordinary citizens feel safe and secure in their online information and service activities, e-government is not going to grow very rapidly.

Despite the importance of security in the virtual world, there are wide variations across nations in the percentage of websites showing a security policy. The countries most likely to show a visible security policy were Togo, Tuvalu, Uruguay, Chile, and South Korea, all with 100 percent of their sites including a statement. This was followed by Australia (93 percent), Canada (89 percent), Singapore (81 percent), United States (54 percent), Great Britain (35 percent), and Taiwan (35 percent). Most other nations did not have sites with a security statement.

Similar to the security area, there are widespread variations across the nations in providing privacy policies on their websites. The countries with the highest percentage of websites offering a visible privacy policy were Australia, Togo, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Chile, and South Korea, all with 100 percent of their sites featuring a privacy statement. These nations were followed by Taiwan (96 percent), China (93 percent), Canada (89 percent), Singapore (88 percent), United States (76 percent), and Great Britain (50 percent). Most other countries did not offer privacy statements online.

There has been considerable progress on disability access. Whereas only 2 percent of government websites had some form of disability access last year, 33 percent do in 2002. To be recorded as accessible to the disabled, the site had to display features that would be helpful to the hearing or visually impaired. For example, TTY (Text Telephone) or TDD (Telephonic Device for the Deaf) phone numbers allow hearing-impaired individuals to contact the agency by phone. Second, the site could be "Bobby Approved," meaning that the site has been deemed disability-accessible by a non-profit group that rates Internet web sites for such accessibility (http://www.cast.org/bobby/). Third, the site could have web accessibility features consistent with standards mandated by groups such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) or legislative acts of the national government.

About half (43 percent) of national government websites have foreign language features that allow access to non-native speaking individuals. By foreign language feature, we mean any accommodation to the non-native speakers in a particular country, such as text translation into a different language. Ninety-five countries had no language translation on their site other than their native tongue.

Many nations are struggling with the issue of how to pay for electronic governance. As shown below, twice as many government websites in 2002 were likely to rely on ads (8 percent) as was true in 2001. However, ads are much more prevalent than user fees (1 percent) or premium fees (0 percent). The only country that has started to move into premium fee areas is Canada (and to a lesser extent Australia). Five percent of Canadian public sector websites had areas requiring payment to enter.

When defining an advertisement, we eliminated computer software available for free download (such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, Netscape Navigator, and Microsoft Internet Explorer) since they are necessary for viewing or accessing particular products or publications. Links to commercial products or services available for a fee were included as advertisements as were banner, pop-up, and fly-by advertisements.

Tourism was the government sector most likely to have advertisements. For example, the Geographia Travel Service and Caribbean Tourism Organization had commercials on the Antigua and Barbuda tourism site. The Information Center for Scientific Research and Encyclopedia Britannica advertised on the Bhutan tourism site. Jetsave Travel had spots on the Cook Islands tourism portal, while CentralEurope.com, Radiocontact.ro (a radio agency), and Net-on.com (a net ad solution company) had commercials on the Romanian tourism website.

Other examples of public sector website advertisements included Turkmen Telecom on the Turkmenistan Communications page, Estat.com on the Algerian Finance site, World Road Congress on the South African transportation page, Healingsites.net on the Nigerian ports page, the American Heart Association on the Croatian Health Department page, Knowledgewave.org on the New Zealand government page, Bahraintoday.net on the Bahrain page, Absolute agency (a dating service) on the Russian Federation Agriculture page, and Mongolamedia.com on the Mongolia Foreign Affairs website.

Countries that had the largest percentage of websites with commercial advertising were Afghanistan, Mexico, Moldova, Bahama, Bahrain, Peru, Qatar, Turkmenistan, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Bhutan, Central Africa Republican, Chile, Cuba, Antigua, and South Korea. Each of these nations had ads on all their sites. This was followed by Argentina (69 percent), Kuwait (67 percent), China (53 percent), Nigeria (50 percent), Niue (50 percent), Bolivia (50 percent), and Kazakhstan (50 percent).

Examples of countries relying on user fees included visa applications in Singapore, Australia, and Hong Kong as well as access to court record charges in some U.S. Circuit Courts.

Some countries have started to develop restricted areas on their websites that require a username and password for accessibility. Sometimes, this is for security reasons, while other times, it occurs through an interest in personalizing service delivery. This year, 6 percent of government websites across the world had restricted areas.

Examples of website restrictions included access to bulletin boards, forums, and newsgroups (Algeria, Chad, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Mexico), transportation and accommodation reservations in Taiwan, Ireland, and the Dominican Republic, the Resource Center on the Malaysia Trade and Industry page, and Intranets on the pages of Venezuela, Canada, Guatemala, and Indonesia.

E-government offers the potential to bring citizens closer to their governments. Regardless of the type of political system that a country has, the public benefits from interactive features that facilitate communication between citizens and government. In our examination of national government websites, we looked for various features that would help citizens contact government officials and make use of information on websites.

Email is an interactive feature that allows ordinary citizens to pose questions of government officials or request information or services. In our study, we found that 75 percent (up from 73 percent in 2001) of government websites offered email contact material so that a visitor could email a person in a particular department other than the Webmaster.

While email is certainly the easiest method of contact, there are other methods that government websites can employ to facilitate public feedback. These include areas to post comments (other than through email), the use of message boards, and chat rooms. Websites using these features allow citizens and department members alike to read and respond to others' comments regarding issues facing the department. This technology is less prevalent than email, with 33 percent of websites offering this feature.

Fifty-four percent of the sites we examined had the ability to search the particular website. Two percent of sites offer live broadcasts of important speeches or events ranging from coverage of the government hearings and broadcasts of public speeches to weekly Internet radio shows featuring various department officials. Ten percent of government websites allow citizens to register to receive updates regarding specific issues. With this feature, web visitors can input their email addresses, street addresses, or telephone numbers to receive information about a particular subject as new information becomes available. The information can be in the form of a monthly e-newsletter highlighting a prime minister's views or in the form of alerts notifying citizens whenever a particular portion of the website is updated. One percent of sites allow websites to be personalized to the interests of the visitor.

It is useful to have email contact information on government websites, but this material is not helpful unless there is someone who actually answers the email. In order to test how responsive various governments were to citizen inquiries, we sent email messages to each of the 1,197 government websites we assessed. Our message was a simple question: "I would like to know what hours your agency is open during the week. Thanks for your help." We tracked whether agencies responded, and if so, how many business days it took them to respond.

As shown below, only 19 percent of agencies responded to our question, 75 percent did not, and 6 percent had broken email links or addresses that prevented a response. Twelve percent responded within one day, three percent took two days, two percent responded in three days, and two percent replied in four or more days.

In order to see how the 198 nations ranked overall, we created a 0 to 100 point e-government index and applied it to each nation's websites based on the availability of contact information, publications, databases, portals, and number of online services. Four points were awarded to each website for the presence of each of the following features: phone contact information, addresses, publications, databases, links to other sites, audio clips, video clips, foreign language access, not having ads, not having premium fees, not having restricted areas, not having user fees, disability access, having privacy policies, security policies, having a portal connection, allowing digital signatures on transactions, an option to pay via credit cards, email contact information, search capabilities, areas to post comments, broadcasts of events, option for email updates, and option for website personalization. These features provided a maximum of 96 points for particular websites.

Each site then qualified for a bonus of four points based on the number of online services executable on that site (1 point for one service, two points for two services, three points for three services, and four points for four or more services). Only 3 percent of government websites had four or more services. The e-government index therefore ran along a scale from 0 (having none of these features and no online services) to 100 (having all features plus at least four online services). Totals for each website within a country were averaged across all of that nation's websites to produce a 0 to 100 overall rating for that nation.

The top country in our ranking is Taiwan at 72.5 percent. This means that every website we analyzed for that nation has nearly three-quarters of the features important for information availability, citizen access, portal access, and service delivery. Other nations that score well on e-government include South Korea (64.0 percent), Canada (61.1 percent), United States (60.1 percent), Chile (60.0 percent), Australia (58.3 percent), China (56.3 percent), Switzerland (55.4 percent), Great Britain (54.8 percent), and Singapore (53.5 percent). The Appendix lists e-government scores for each of the 198 countries, plus comparisons between 2001 and 2002. In general, most countries scored higher this year compared to 2001.

There are some differences in e-government by region of the world. In looking at the overall e-government scores by region, North America scores the highest (60.4 percent), followed by Asia (48.7 percent), Western Europe (47.6 percent), Eastern Europe (43.5 percent), Middle East (43.2 percent), South America (42.0 percent), Central America (41.2 percent), Pacific Ocean Islands (39.5 percent), Russia and Central Asia (37.2 percent), and Africa (36.8 percent). These generally are higher than the 2001 regional ratings.

In looking at regional differences by particular feature, North America and Asian nations rank most highly on services, while North America, Asia, and Western Europe score highest on access to publications. The areas having the greatest access to foreign language translation included Eastsern Europe, Western Europe, Russia/Central Asia, and the Middle East.

To summarize, we find that progress has been made over the past year in the extent to which helpful material has been placed online. Most countries are putting more information online and providing disability access. Many nations also have developed plans designed to implement new e-government initiatives. While there are considerable variations in what each country would like to accomplish in this area, most places see great potential in incorporating the Internet as a tool for economic development and public outreach. In the long-run, we expect e-government to create a new dimension to the relationship between governments and citizens.

However, in order for progress to be made, more work needs to be undertaken by central governments to upgrade e-government. Aside from publications and links to other sources of information, few countries offer online services or describe their privacy and security policies. In addition, three-quarters of national government agencies do not respond to simple email requests for information. This impedes the ability of the Internet to serve as a two-way channel of communications between governments and citizens.

There are a number of steps countries need to take in order to improve navigation and provide access to information. One of the weaknesses of many national websites has been their inconsistency in terms of design features. Government agencies guard their autonomy very carefully, and it has taken a while to get agencies to work together to make the tasks of citizens easier to undertake. Common navigational systems help the average citizen make use of the wealth of material that is online.

The same logic applies in regard to features that allow citizens to post comments or otherwise provide feedback about a government agency. Citizens bring diverse perspectives and experiences to e-government, and agencies benefit from citizen suggestions, complaints, and feedback. Even a simple feature such as a comment form empowers citizens and gives them an opportunity to voice their opinion about government services they would like to see. Governments should consider market research, public opinion surveys, or focus groups that would provide them with information on how citizens feel about e-government websites and what features would attract them to use these sites. This would help them design updates and service enhancements that would satisfy the interests of their particular users.

Clearly, a major challenge of e-government is the up-front costs of developing a website and putting information and services online. Right now, many nations appear to be undertaking these tasks in isolation from other nations, thereby robbing each country of the opportunity to achieve economies of scale that would lower the per unit cost of e-government websites. Smaller and poorer countries should undertake regional e-government alliances that would allow them to pool resources and gain greater efficiency at building their infrastructure. These efforts at regional cooperation are valuable because they put countries in a position where they can share knowledge and expertise as well as lower their overall costs.

Note: The following table shows e-government rank orderings for the 198 countries, from most highly ranked to least highly ranked.

Note: The following table shows the percentage of websites in each country that have each feature, such as online services, publications, databases, privacy policies, security policies, and disability accessibility.

Note: The following table shows the percentage of websites in each country that have each feature, such as foreign language translation, advertisements, premium fees, restricted areas, user fees, and search engines.