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Brookings releases new report on e-government

The Brookings Institute has released a new report on the potential of high speed Internet to improve governments' delivery of information and services to their citizens.

"Electronic government offers the promise of utilizing technology to improve public sector performance as well as employing new advances for democracy itself. In its boldest formulation, technology is seen as a tool for long-term system transformation."

The report notes many governments across the globe are already taking advantage of these opportunities to some extent. For example:

  • "The Canadian Portal site provides a good example of an accessibility feature that provides audio readings of the page—vital for those visitors who have problems seeing or reading information on websites. This feature allows visitors to change the voice and speed of the reading.”
  • “The Austrian Agriculture site allows visitors to calculate their ecological footprint.”

There are several other exciting electronic government initiatives - not listed in the report – such as:

  • In the United Kingdom, FixMyStreet allows people to alert public works departments of graffiti, broken pavement, unlit streetlights and other problems on a map and track the progress of it being fixed.
  • ArgentinaElections.com was an interactive all-access portal that included the platforms of all 14 candidates and interviews with electoral experts, academics, journalists and the candidates.

However, in the U.S. our lack of universal high speed Internet access is preventing us from harnessing the full power of these new technologies to make government more accessible to the public. The report states:

The United States has fallen behind many countries in Internet access and broadband usage... This limits the ability of Americans to take full advantage of the Internet and media-rich applications. To maintain its technology edge in the 21st century, the United States simply must invest more in research and development.

The full Brookings report is available here.

High speed Internet offers countless possibilities for connecting the U.S. government with the American people. But our country won't be able to take full advantage of this technology until it's available to everyone.

Executive Summary: Improving Technology Utilization in Electronic Government around the World, 2008 (Brookings Institute)

FixMyStreet (MySociety)

Elecciones Argentina (The University of British Columbia) 

Full Report: Improving Technology Utilization in Electronic Government around the World, 2008 (Brookings Institute)