Government Leadership in Customer Service

In June, Accenture published a report entitled Leadership in Customer Service: Delivering on the Promise. Just the title assumes that we have come a long way. eGov is now gov, at least one of the primary channels if not more than that. eGov is also more than html pages. It is a more comprehensive, collaborative way of not only delivering information and services but of developing community in which government is an important, but certainly not the only component. The report discusses the relevancy of social networks in government.

We are in the process of developing the collaboration plan component of our more comprehensive egov strategic plan. Accenture recognizes the importance of SOA in developing a sound, citizen-focused strategy:

SOAs can only grow in importance, and governments, particularly as they push for more service collaboration, will look for more nimble solutions for dealing with their existing legacysystems and inequalities of technological sophistication. Leaders already recognize the value of SOAs. According to recent Accenture research, fully half of high-performing IT organizations (businesses and governments alike) are committing SOA technology to their business, compared with only 23 percent of all respondents overall.

Included in the report is Accenture's periodic rating of national governments. As probably might be expected, Singapore, Canada, the U.S., and Denmark were again at the top of their survey.

Other news:
Scott Lemon has used Ning to create something he is calling the Utah Entrepreneur Network.

Google's 411 service not only connects you with business, but if you say "map it" automatically sends a map and details of the business you are looking for to your mobile device.