Assessing E-Government Report now Available

This past summer, researchers at Brown University conducted the first nationwide content analysis of state and federal government Web sites. The study, Assessing E-Government: The Internet, Democracy, and Service Delivery by State and Federal Governments, focused on features available on-line, the level of variation across the country and between state and national governmental sites, and how those sites respond to citizen requests for information. Researchers surveyed state and federal chief information officers, performed an e-mail response test, and analyzed 1,813 websites for content in their study.

The researchers report that e-government - the delivery of information and services online through the Internet or other digital means - has not reached its full potential and that quality varies widely from state to state, and from state to nation, and even within each state. Federal web sites were better at providing information and services than were the states.

The authors suggested four steps government information officials should take to improve their e-government web sites:

• Improve web site organization and structure;
• Bring state legislative and judicial sites up to the standard of the executive branch;
• Post all phone, address, and email contact information; 
• Increase web site accessibility for the disabled and non-English speakers.

A series of tables show the rankings of the states and federal sites for: security, privacy and disability access; foreign language access; services offered; and overall state ranking. Also included were percentages of sites that offered certain detailed information, that offered services, the most frequently offered services, those that offer democratic outreach, and length of response time.

To view the full report, please go to http://www.insidepolitics.org/egovtreport00.html

(Our thanks to Digest reader David Hochman for bringing this story to our attention)