Despite the financial and competitive advantages of offering
government services via the internet, even those countries that
have advanced the furthest down the path to e-government transact
relatively little business digitally, according to a new global
study by Andersen Consulting, the management and technology
consultancy. The leaders include the United States, Singapore,
Australia and Canada - but not the UK.
The report claims that more than 90 percent of the various
services national governments offer that could be transacted over
the internet are not handled electronically. Even the five leading
governments in the study achieved only 20% of their capacity to
provide on-line service delivery. The reasons for this include
concerns about privacy, cost and the complexity of migrating from
legacy systems to the electronic environment.
Only half of countries examined transact any
government-to-citizen or government-to-business services
on-line.
Andersen Consulting defines e-government as applying e-commerce
tools and techniques to the business of governing to benefit
government stakeholders, including individuals, businesses and
government itself. To determine the progress of e-government
worldwide, Andersen Consulting studied 20 governments including
Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan,
Singapore, the US and the UK.
The study found that, to date, governments are generally stuck
at the earliest stage - using the internet to disseminate
information and have made only limited progress in
interacting with citizens over the Internet and transacting
business, according to the report.
