The most unusual feature was found at the Luxembourg Central Bank, (http://www.bcl.lu/en/bcl/index.html), where a tsunami relief request actually linked visitors to a Wikipedia site for the Star Trek television character "Worf” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worf). However, the link was taken down soon after it appeared.I thought this comment was a little odd (listed under novel and innovative features on government websites):
The National Endowment for Arts has an application where visitors can share the page via Facebook, MySpace and Stumble, for example.The comment refers to the "add this" button that is easily added to a site in minutes (we use it on Utah.gov) and is included on thousands of websites (doesn't seem that innovative).
The report meticulously identifies places where national websites advertise private services.
The U.S. comes in third place in the 2008 report, listed behind South Korea and Taiwan (actually, look at this for Taiwan). Both of these countries are among the top ten or so reference egov sites that I look at when exploring egov innovation.
Spain is listed as 14th, up from 21 last year. Congratulations to my Spanish readers. Spain really is a leader in egov.
Three big surprises; West lists Ghana as #13 (up from 75), Monaco at #12 (up from 68), and Tonga at #19 (up from 189). According to Wikipedia, this is Tonga's official government portal. Wow, that's all I can say. Actually, it appears to be this Drupal-based site. When I follow their link to "online services", I get a few news articles instead. When I try to access podcasts on the Ghana site, I end up with a site not found error. There is a current RSS feed though. Not to argue, but it seems a shame that someone like Denmark (#62) and Sweden (#72), who have invested so much effort into creating a quality web presence would be rated so much lower in a study of this level of importance.
1 comment:
I'm not sure this study is so important. Methodology is disputable. I remember Iraq scoring better than Italy (after the US invasion). It's years I work on measuring eGovernment, and every time I loook at the report it seems quite odd and arbitrary. Have not read this years' report but the quotes you report confirm that.
Post a Comment