Providence, RI-A new study of global e-government undertaken by researchers at Brown University shows that only 16 percent of government agencies around the world are offering online services. While this is up from 12 percent in last year's study, the research demonstrates that governments have a long way to go toward realizing the promise of electronic government.

The third annual survey conducted by Professor Darrell M. West of the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University and a team of researchers including Adam Deitch and Vanessa Wellbery, measured each country's on-line presence. The research evaluated government websites on more than two dozen different criteria, including the availability of publications, databases, disability access, privacy, security, and the number of online services. Previous studies of global e-government were released in 2001 and 2002.

This year's study reviews 2,166 government websites in 198 countries during June, July, and August, 2003. Among the sites analyzed are those of executive offices, legislative offices, judicial offices, 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.

Researchers find that 89 percent of websites have online publications and 73 percent provide links to databases. Only 12 percent show privacy policies and 6 percent present security policies. Government websites also are lagging on disability access. Only 14 percent of sites provide some form of disability access, such as the visually or hearing-impaired.

In addition to looking at particular features, researchers also rate countries for overall e-government performance. Using an assessment of number of services plus access to information, disability access, privacy, security, and foreign language translation, each country is rated on a 0 to 100 point scale. The most highly ranked country is Singapore, followed by the United States, Canada, Australia, Taiwan, Turkey, Great Britain, Malaysia, the Vatican, and Austria. The following table shows how each of the world's 198 countries rank on e-government performance.

In the conclusion of the report, the research team presents a number of suggestions to improve service delivery and provide access to information. Many web sites have links to "services" and "e-services" that are not actually either. These links typically lead a user to details about a manual service offered by the department or ministry or to a form in PDF-format that one can download and then mail in. While a step toward online government, the fact that these documents are not fully executable online limits their utility.

In evaluating international website performance, one of the most difficult challenges was the slow loading speed of many sites. Slow servers made it very difficult and time-consuming to effectively ascertain information about a country and almost impossible to execute online transactions. In addition, sites that do not have privacy policies should post them; those that do should make them more visible. Whereas the expectation is that a link to a privacy policy is included on the bottom of every page of a web site, this is often not the case.

Some sites boasted that they are approved by disability access standards, but are not accessible in reality. Others have special links to disability-friendly versions of the site that also do not pass the access test. Overall, few international websites are accessible for the disabled.

Finally, it is important for government officials to update their sites on a regular basis. Many web sites are blatantly outdated, both in appearance and content. Though updated aesthetics are not necessarily imperative, old information is not very useful. Some sites included a "Last Updated On" date that rendered the site unaltered for more than three or four years. The inclusion of the date on which a site was last updated is a valuable means for citizens to be able to determine how up-to-date the site is.