News - Agencies measure progress towards

Agencies measure progress towards e-government

September 2003

In the first of a series of survey rounds, the 36 Public Service agencies were invited to pool information about their individual e-government activities. Agencies reported over 150 separate e-government initiatives about one-quarter of which have already been delivered.

Agencies reported e-government initiatives are being driven primarily by the promise of improved efficiency, cost-effectiveness and a better quality of service delivery. Other factors affecting the move to e-government include direct customer demand for online services and the ability to offer an additional delivery channel for information and services.

Apart from providing a benchmark for the e-government programme as a whole, the results provide agencies with a chance to see how their initiatives relate to those of other agencies. Currently one-fifth of the initiatives involve collaboration across agencies. Overseas experience suggests that greater collaboration between agencies in delivering more integrated services will be achieved. Collaboration is one of the e-government factors that future rounds of the survey will be able to measure.

A second round of information gathering will begin in October.