Canada #6 in Global E-Government Survey (en francais)

2005 Global E-Government survey from Brown University's Center for Public Policy.

While Canada ranks well in this 198 country survey, if you look at the countries in the top 10, it's easy to see that we risk dropping even further if the pace of improvement doesn't increase. The only country in the top 10 to drop from 2004 numbers was Australia.






Top 10 in E-Government Survey
(2004 results in brackets)

1. Taiwan 57.2 (44.3)
2. Singapore 54.5 (43.8)
3. United States 50.5 (41.9)
4. Hong Kong 46.2 (33.7)
5. China 44.3 (37.3)
6. Canada 43.3 (40.3)
7. Germany 35.3 (35.0)
8. Australia 35.1 (36.7)
9. Ireland 34.6 (29.9)
10 Vatican 34.5 (26)

Canada's Individual Scores
Online Services 27
Publications 93
Data bases 60
Privacy Policy 100
Security Policy 100
W3C Disability/Accessibility 70

Criteria
In order to see how the 198 nations ranked overall, we create a 0 to 100 point e-government index and apply it to each nation's websites based on the availability of publications, databases, and number of online services. Four points are awarded to each website for the presence of the following features: publications, databases, audio clips, video clips, foreign language access, not having ads, not having premium fees, not having user fees, disability access, having privacy policies, security policies, allowing digital signatures on transactions, an option to pay via credit cards, email contact information, areas to post comments, option for email updates, option for website personalization, and PDA accessibility. These features provide a maximum of 72 points for particular websites.

Each site then qualifies for a bonus of 28 points based on the number of online services executable on that site (1 point for one service, two points for two services, three points for three services, and on up to twenty-eight points for twenty-eight or more services). The e-government index runs along a scale from zero (having none of these features and no online services) to 100 (having all features plus at least 28 online services). Totals for each website within a country were averaged across all of that nation's websites to produce a zero to 100 overall rating for that nation.

The top country in our ranking is Taiwan at 57.2 percent. This means that every website we analyzed for that nation has more than half of the features important for information availability, citizen access, portal access, and service delivery. Other nations that score well on e-government include Singapore, United States, Hong Kong, China, Canada, Germany, Australia, and Ireland. The Appendix lists e-government scores for each of the 198 countries, plus comparisons between 2004 and 2005.

A Note on Methodology
The data for our analysis consist of an assessment of 1,797 national government websites for the 198 nations around the world (see Appendix for the full list of countries). We analyze a range of sites within each country to get a full sense of what is available in particular nations. Among the sites analyzed are those of executive offices (such as a president, prime minister, ruler, party leader, or royalty), legislative offices (such as Congress, Parliament, or People's Assemblies), judicial offices (such as major national courts), Cabinet offices, and major agencies serving crucial functions of government, such as health, human services, taxation, education, interior, economic development, administration, natural resources, foreign affairs, foreign investment, transportation, military, tourism, and business regulation. Websites for subnational units, obscure boards and commissions, local government, regional units, and municipal offices are not included in this study. The analysis was undertaken during June and July, 2005 at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Tabulation for this project was completed by Amy Goins, Emily Lewis-Lamonica, Zhizhan Gu, Devon Dear, Masha Kirasirova, Mark Severs, Ethan Burton, Jeff Tiell, and Ramadan Hussein. National government website addresses can be found at www.InsidePolitics.org/world.html.

The regional breakdowns for the websites we studied are 20 percent from Western European countries, followed by 14 percent from Africa, 13 percent from the Middle East, 12 percent from Asia, 9 percent Eastern Europe, 8 percent South America, 7 percent Pacific Ocean countries (meaning those off the Asian continent), 7 percent from Central America, 5 percent North America (which included Canada, the United States, and Mexico), and 5 percent Russia and Central Asia (such as the areas of the former Soviet Union).

Websites are evaluated for the presence of various features dealing with information availability, service delivery, and public access. Features assessed included the name of the nation, region of the world, and having the following features: online publications, online database, audio clips, video clips, non-native languages or foreign language translation, commercial advertising, premium fees, user payments, disability access, privacy policy, security features, presence of online services, number of different services, digital signatures, credit card payments, email address, comment form, automatic email updates, website personalization, personal digital assistant (PDA) access, and an English version of the website. Where national government websites are not in English, our research team employed foreign language readers to evaluate government websites.