Curious as to the success (or failure) of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act? School Results is a public-private collaboration to provide data from the first rounds of NCLB initiatives and standardized testing. The project is funded by the U.S. Department of Education.
Though the existing data is slim at the moment (only seven states are currently available, and 2/5 of the individual schools I checked lacked sufficient data to provide analysis), this is exactly the kind of use of the web to provide tangible evidence of the results of legislative actions. NCLB was proposed to achieve certain goals, with this data resource easily available, it should now be easier to determine whether those goals are being achieved.
The U.S. was founded on, amongst other things, the principle of a decentralized government. Early in the nation's history, this decentralization led to rampant corruption and cronism. Over the years government has become increasingly centralized and, at least in terms of technology, centralization should be the way to go. For example, enterprise architecture is a significantly more appropriate policy than each agency developing their own technology solutions.
Unfortunately, a recent report has found the Government Services Administration (GSA) is in need of a "thorough housecleaning."
The GSA is a centralized agency that handles much of the federal government's technology procurement and implementation. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley said that the GSA has "committed almost every conceivable contracting irregularity," and that the violations "seem to reflect an endemic and epidemic pattern of gross mismanagement, failed oversight, a flawed rewards system, and potential malfeasance."
Pending any additional investigation, I think it is a very safe bet that there will soon be major changes at GSA, effecting federal eGov/IT policy immensly.
An excellent eGov 2003 Year in Review from the one and only Gotze. Not sure how I'd not managed to notice this earlier. Also check out his 2004 eGov Year in Preview.
The Washington Post looks back at one year of the E-Government Act. The federal eGov initiative has been reasonably successful, expecially considering that it has received roughly 1/10 of the funding proposed in the 2002 Act.
There is another (and actually much better) year in review available at FCW.
The Association for Federal Information Resources Management (AFFIRM) has recently released the report from their annual survey of the senior federal Information Technology (IT) managers to determine the most critical challenges facing federal Chief Information Officers (CIO).
The survey found the top challenges, which have not changed since last year, include:
The most vital tecnologies / uses were:
Most interesting to me was that less than federal IT mangers felt only 21% of intitiatives would successfully initiated in 2004. (Another 76% responded intiatiives would be "somewhat" successful). This doesn't seem to bode well for the President that their isn't a great deal of confidence in his eGov Agenda. Still, these confidence numbers have increased significantly each year, so there is a liklihood those with negative projections will be change their opinions once the plans are in place and working.
A UN sponsored report looked at the municipalities across the world and rated their level of eGovernance based on number of metrics. The study looked at 80 large cities and analyzed them using 92 measures in five core areas: 1. Security and Privacy, 2. Usability, 3. Content, 4. Services, and 5. Citizen Participation.
Four of the overall top five cities came from Asia (1. Seoul, 2. Hong Kong, 3. Singapore, 4. New York, and 5. Shanghai).
The full report is available here, and a table listing the cities in their rankings in each category is available here.
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.
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.
Last week the Council for Excellence in Government released a report on the attitudes and expectations of eGov. The study found that half of all Americans and 75% of all Internet users have interacted on some level with an eGov website.
The research found that those performing tasks, like renewing their drivers licence, were easier online, which is a pretty obvious conclusion. Actually, all the findings were obvious - users would like to complete tedious tasks (like filing taxes, and paying parking tickets) online, they felt eGov would only get better over the course of years, but there were some privacy issues. Still, it is sometimes worthwhile to do a survey like this to confirm that end-users and developers are actually on the same page as far as expectations and desires.