We usually don't offer up a report as a Resource of the Week here on RS, since posting reports is what we do on DocuTicker, our sister site. But this report from The Brookings Institution came out just before Labor Day weekend, when posting on both sites is traditionally light, and we thought it was interesting enough to bring it to your attention.
The social and political impact of new technology long has been debated among observers. Throughout American history, technological innovations – from the movable-type printing press in the 15th century, the telegraph in 1844, and the telephone in 1876 to the rise of radio in the 1920s and coast-to-coast television broadcasting in 1946 – have sparked much speculation. Transformationalists often claim that new technology will produce widespread consequences. Incrementalists, on the other hand, point to the influence of institutional forces—such as structural fragmentation within government as well as issues related to the investment cost and organizational structures of state and federal government—in limiting the speed and breadth of technology’s impact on the public sector.
This report assesses the nature of American state and federal electronic government in 2008 by examining whether e-government effectively capitalizes on the interactive features available on the World Wide Web to improve service delivery and public outreach. Although considerable progress has been made over the past decade, e-government has fallen short of its potential to transform public-sector operations. This report closes by suggesting how public officials can take maximum advantage of technology to improve government performance.
These key findings come from the full report (PDF; 543 KB):
+ Eighty-nine percent of state and federal websites have services that are fully executable online, compared with 86 percent in 2007.
+ Three percent of government websites are accessible through personal digital assistants (PDAs), pagers or mobile phones, up from 1 percent last year.
+ Seventy-three percent of government websites have some form of privacy policy available online (the same as last year), and 58 percent have a visible security policy (up from 52 percent last year).
+ Forty percent of government websites offer some type of foreign language translation, up from 22 percent last year.
+ Sixty-four percent of government websites are written at the 12th-grade reading level or higher, which is much higher than that of the average American.
+ Seven percent of government websites have user fees.
+ Twenty-five percent of federal websites and 19 percent of state websites are accessible to the disabled.
+ The highest-ranking state websites belong to Delaware, Georgia, Florida, California, Massachusetts, Maine, Kentucky, Alabama, Indiana and Tennessee.
+ The top-ranking federal websites are the national portal USA.gov, Department of Agriculture, General Services Administration, Postal Service, Internal Revenue Service, Department of Education, Small Business Administration, Library of Congress, Department of Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board.
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