Recently, I read an article in Newsweek that surprised me. It was titled “Your Pass to Good Government” and it was about eGovernment initiatives around the world. What surprised me was that the countries that were lauded as forerunners of eGovernment service delivery were South Korea and Estonia. This was not what I would have expected. My biased perception was that countries with longstanding democracies, like the U.S. and parts of Europe would naturally be ahead of other parts of the world with respect to eGovernment. Apparently, Seoul’s Cyber Policy Forum is renowned as a model forum for online citizen problem solving and decision making, and Estonia is a worldwide leader in paperless government. The article piqued my curiosity about what other countries around the world are doing, so I started to look around a bit online. I confess that I discovered far more interesting examples and sites than I had realized were out there. I found a conference site for an international conference on eGovernment held in Singapore this past June . Peter Ho, Head of Civil Service and Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the government of Singapore, made an interesting observation about the future of technology and government. In his keynote address for the conference, he described Singapore’s recent eGovernment initiatives as bringing “government-to-you”. In the future, he predicts that this model will change to one of “government-with-you” where agencies collaborate with citizens and the private sector to foster innovation and improve government services. James Kang, the government CIO of Singapore, elaborated on this by discussing how Singapore plans to make more of its government data available for use for business intelligence and work to engage citizens in the decision-making process through social networking.
Some additional interesting sites that I found describing eGovernment initiatives around the world were:
The European eGovernment awards page.
WeGo – World eGovernments Organization of Cities and Local Governments
ICELE – a site with tools, suggestions and ideas about how to start your own edemocracy initiatives – it is a center “designed to serve as a 'virtual' focal point for collaborative eDemocracy initiatives both in the UK and abroad”