Survey limitations

It is acknowledged that the E-awareness survey can be time-consuming to complete because the information sought is often not available from a single source within an agency. Consequently, completing the survey can require coordinating multiple sources to provide feedback. This year, to make the survey easier and faster for agencies to complete, questions were intentionally kept brief, with a balance between text boxes and check boxes to aid completion. 'Additional Comments' text boxes were provided for the majority of questions, and some information was pre-populated.

Despite these efforts to encourage survey completion, some agencies were unable to complete the survey or to provide responses to all of the questions. When agencies do not complete the survey, the overall quality and usefulness of the information that is collected is reduced. Although incomplete responses are always a problem with surveys, the problem is exacerbated when there are no easily available alternative sources of information.

The development of alternative sources of e-awareness information is being considered for future information gathering. If feasible, such sources may be used to augment the information collected though the traditional survey approach.

For the following reasons, E-awareness 2005 is not as complete as the SSC would have preferred because:

• some questions were not answered by some agencies
• there are e-initiatives and data exchanges that have not been entered
• some information is duplicated, which can occur when two or more agencies are involved in the same project
• certain data exchanges can be entered as e-initiatives, and e-initiatives can be entered as data exchanges
• some questionnaires were not 'finalised', i.e. the process for indicating that the questionnaire had been completed.

Nevertheless, the survey includes information on over 400 e-initiatives being undertaken by 44 government agencies. This is an increase on the 200 or so e-initiatives identified in the last E-awareness survey, and provides a valuable record of the scope and nature of achievements being undertaken across government.