"The Industry Advisory Council’s (IAC) eGov Shared Interest Group (SIG) and the Federal CIO Council, in partnership with E-Gov, today announced the Federal agency programs selected as the “Top 5” within the Excellence.gov awards program. These prestigious programs were selected from a group of 25 program finalists for demonstrating excellence in e-government innovation. " Read more.
The Top 5 Winners were:
Small Business Administration – BusinessLaw.gov
Securities and Exchange Commission – Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval (EDGAR)
Department of Health and Human Services – National Practitioner and Healthcare Integrity and Protection Data Bank (NPDB and HIPDB)
The Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
Department of Defense, Defense Information Systems Agency – Federal Technical Data Solution (FedTeDS)
I took an Electronic Records Management course last semester, and part of my personal research was to take a look at the RM policies of government agencies. My research was in no way comprehensive, but one of the best resources I found was the Georia Secretary of State's Records Management Services website.
They've posted complete RM retention schedules, information on legislation that guides RM policies, and standards and guides for microforms and imaging systems, among other things. The information on the websites covers both state and local level RM and is worth a look, if you are into that kind of thing.
This article looks at the usability efforts of the big e-government portals. The tips they suggests (example: "Define your audience(s)") are very common and simple, but GPO Access and FirstGov really put those principles into action more than any other large organization, even ones that claim to be concernd with usability (Both those sites are certainly more useable than Jakob Nielsen's UseIt).
Accenture (formerly known as Anderson Consulting) is a corporate entity frequently partnered with governments around the world to provide eGov solutions. They've recently issued their fourth annual eGovernment Leadership Report .
Their study identified five major trends in eGovernment:
** eGovernment matures through a series of plateaus.
No eGov iniative goes online fully formed. Even with a growing collection of case studies/best practices, eGov is an iterative process. As returns are reaped on simple initatives, more ambitious goals are set.
** Value drives eGovernment visions.
Compared to the early days of dot.com, "just because it'd be cool" isn't a good enough reason for a government agency to do something online. There must be a tangible ROI (saved money/time, increased customer satisfaction) to justify eGov inititatives.
** Customer Relationship Management (CRM) underpins eGovernment.
This should be a given in any industry. If the customer's needs are met, than an initiative is successful. A happy, engaged customer, remains a customer.
** Increasing take-up is a priority.
The more services you provide online, the more users you need using those services to make it worthwhile. The question is, how do you inform people about, and get them to use those services.
** New eGovernment targets are needed.
The study found that a lot of eGov iniatives were started to achieve a basic level of service as compared to other similar governments. This isn't neccessarily an effective way to do business. The question should alwasy be "how do I serve my customers," not "how does my competitor serve their customers."
The five plateaus mentioned above are: Online Presence, Basic Capability, Service Availability, Mature Delivery, and Service Transofrmation. The meaning of first four should be relatively clear, but the last might need a little explaining. The way I understand it, service transformation involves using eGov not merely as a way to duplicate services provided offline as well, but as a way for effecting change throughout all levels of the government and serving the needs of users in ways that aren't served otherwise.
From what I can tell, Europa is the official portal for information about the European Union. In addition to news, legislation, etc, about the EU, they provide handy links to all official European gov't websites.
Also, they recently released a collection of reports on case studies and best practices of EU eGov initiatives. So far, there are 14 reports from 10 countries, covering local, national, and international projects.