Despite the former Soviet Union's adoption of a policy of openess (glasnost), the reality of that policy hasn't taken nearly the form most people would expected, or hoped for. This is especially true on the Internet, which is supposed to have a democratizing effect in regards to freedom of information.
Estimates place Internet access in Russia at only about 5% (compared to 70% here in the States). Well, Russia has now moved to the second phase in their eGov strategy and one of their big initiatives is to provide increased access. Electronic government in Russia has a long way to go, but there is also a much greater potential. The state of technology in that country hit a peek in the early 60s, and never increased much beyond that. The promise of eGovernment will the ability to quickly jump from the low technology levels to something more equivalent with the rest of the west (or even the far east).
Here is an interesting quote from the article about the current state of technology usage by government agencies to prove my point: "The city of Moscow loses $25 million per year in pensions that are paid out to the deceased because it takes up to six months for death certificates to arrive at the necessary organizations." Cross-agency electronic access to these documents would be an enormous boon to the Russian government.
I've seen a lot or talk about the use of open source software in the public sector. It sort of seems like a gimme to me - open source software is free or inexpensive, usually results in increased security, provides more extensibility, and avoids the market dominance issue by allowing government to do business without complete reliance on Microsoft.
Here is a good resource from Gartner research, which provides an overview of open source iniatiatives in the US and internationally, and provides many links to internal and external sources for more information.
There is a soon to be released survey on legal issues of information on the web and here is an interesting little pre-article about it. The question of how do you make information easily available (in accordane with the Freedom of Information Act), but still protect privacy issues (in accordance with the Data Protection Act). It seems impossible to abide by one set of legislation without runnign afoul of the other. To make matters even more difficult, the real problem, one information expert suggests, "is a lack of trust and confidence in the Government keeping and handling the information properly.”
You can preorder the report here. If it is available free somewhere at a later date, I'll take a look and provide a link then.
I wrote two of my end of term papers on various eGov topics (one on the Federal Depository Library Program and GPO Access and the other on eVoting). If anyone might be interested in reading either of those, once I get them back and make sure I've gotten the As I deserve, leave a message in comments.
If you are a government CIO and you don't happen to check your inbox very often, here is the memo from eGov Czar Mark Foreman specifying procedures to collect part of the $5 million federal budget allocated to eGov this fiscal year.
Many apologies. I'm in the midst of finals, and very stressed at the moment. I shall return and begin a much more regular blogging schedule come Monday, May 12th.
Inside Politics is dubbed a "Your Guide to National and State Politices," and is just that. There is a wealth of information here, mostly financial data about US legislators and research/polls performed by Brown University, which only makes sense considering the site is compiled by Darrell West, a profesor at Brown's Center for Public Policy. What should be of particular interest to anyone who'd be stopping by here are the Urban, State and Federal, and Global eGovernment reports. I wont offer any critique, since I haven't poured through them all yet, but I feel safe sharing the links since this is the third year West has performed this survey, and each of the reports seems to offer a very detailed analysis. The Global eGovernment report, for example, looked at 1,197 iniatitives in nearly 200 hundred countries.
ABC News is collecting daily "notes" from the presidential candidates and collecting them on one website. The notes can be on any topic, but must be 200 words or less. Most of the notes have been written (or at least attributed) to the candidates themselves.
The Washington Post is calling it a weblog, but I don't see it. I'm not sure what could more can be communicated by the candidates in 200 of their own words that isn't included in the reams of ink already dedicated to the campaign everyday by paid reporters and bloggers. Vermont Governor Howard Dean has an official weblog for his campaign. It is updated severeal times a day, with links to press, updates on movement along the campaign trail, and general commentary, but isn't updated by Dean himself, rather a collection of PR flacks (I'm guessing). Still, it is a good to see candidates embracing technology, and this should be an increasingly interesting read as the campaign continues, especially in light of the verbal volleys already taking place between Dean and Kerry.