Category: eGovernment

Andersen Consulting is, just like many of the other large consulting companies, getting interested in e-government. Andersen’s eGovernment programme asks: But is the rhetoric of online government matched by reality? How long is it taking governments to achieve their vision? What areas of Government service are already online and how far do governments have to go to realize the potential of eGovernment? They set out to answer these questions through a research project examining the eGovernment status of 20 countries. Behaving as citizens and businesses, they accessed the web sites of national governments to determine whether we could receive services/conduct business with government electronically. The results show, despite the financial and competitive advantages of offering government services via the Internet, even those countries that have advanced the furthest down the path to eGovernment transact relatively little business digitally.

In a GSA news release, Opening Up Government: “FirstGovTM is about open government,” said GSA Administrator Dave Barram. “Citizens will have the opportunity to know government better than they’ve ever known it before. FirstGovTM raises the bar-American citizens will expect more and the federal government will need to deliver more. It will shake up government web sites and will change how people in government work.” So, forget WebGov, now it’s about FirstGov (I think …)

Seattle Times, Government information will soon be a click away The site, http://www.firstgov.gov, should be operating within 90 days as the government and Web designers worked “in the spirit of cutting through red tape,” President Clinton said yesterday.

Federal Computer Week: GSA moving to open WebGov portal. “The General Services Administration plans within a month to hire a company or group of companies to construct WebGov and to have the long-awaited governmentwide Internet portal in operation this fall.”.