Arguments Opposed to the Resolution

We believe our opponents have taken an unnecessarily narrow view of the potential impact of e-government. They appear to ignore (or take for granted) the vast improvements that have already taken place within the government’s internal information infrastructure and in the general availability and accessibility of information and services to the public.

It is true that there are some significant problems that will need to be addressed in order to achieve efficient and effective e-government, but the existence of such problems – many of which are not unique to government e-development – are hardly proof positive that they cannot be solved.

The very fact that the problems are being recognized and analyzed demonstrates that e-government efforts have moved beyond the initial “hype” stage and have reached the necessary realization that truly transformative e-government can only be achieved through a significant change in the way government conceives of itself and its relationship with the public. But this is exactly what the public will increasingly demand as online technology becomes more accessible and integral to daily life.

Digital Dialogue

According to the Hansard Group, "Our broader research demonstrates that the public is interested in a more meaningful and sustained interaction with political institutions, and that this aspiration is reciprocated by Parliament and government at a central and local level." [1]

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e-Government Success Stories

South Korea

South Korea's e-government program ranked first in the 2006 Global E-Government Report based on a survey of conducted by The Center for Public Policy at Brown. [2]. The study found that the South Korean program had an "impressive level of organization and offer a wealth of information and services," and that it "offers an abundance of features while remaining user-friendly for its visitors." [3]

• The main government portal, for example, offers easy access to over 500 government services fully executable online.

• Other departmental pages offer a wide range of e-services, such as paying taxes, checking bar exam results, or searching for lost relatives in North Korea.

• All sites contain publications and databases, and nearly all offer audio or video clips.

• The Korean sites are highly customizable, with a majority allowing the user to manage his or her own activities. In addition, most sites offer PDA or wireless access, and nearly all allow visitors to sign up for e-mail updates.

• Also notable are the interactive features available for users – virtually every site contains a prominent guestbook or forum as well as the option to petition the particular department.

• The Korean pages feature a clever design characterized by colorful drawings and icons which are appealing to the eye and allow for easy navigation.

Estonia

• The Kodanikuportaal (Citizen’s Portal) allows Estonian citizens to enter and confirm data in the various national databases, fill out application forms, and sign and send documents, allowing government to operate more efficiently and more accurately.
• The Teabeportaal (Information Portal) provides information about government services, ranging from planned power outages to contact information for a wide range of governmental entities.
• The E-Governance Academy is "a non-governmental, non-profit organisation, founded for the creation and transfer of knowledge concerning e-governance, e-democracy and the development of civil society."

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Efforts to Improve Efficiency and Effectiveness

Governments are developing integrated e-government programs, similar to the South Korean model.

"Transformational Government" Initiative in the UK

[4]

Europe's Information Society

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/index_en.htm

US Government Efforts

USA.gov [5]

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Promoting Government Transparancy

Sunlight Foundation

The Sunlight Foundation was founded in January 2006 with the goal of using the revolutionary power of the Internet and new information technology to enable citizens to learn more about what Congress and their elected representatives are doing, and thus help reduce corruption, ensure greater transparency and accountability by government, and foster public trust in the vital institutions of democracy. Sunlight Foundations efforts are entirely focused on the use of "technology and the power of the Internet" to help citizens, journalists and bloggers "be their own best watchdogs, both by improving access to existing information and digitizing new information, and by creating new tools and websites to enable all of us to pool our intelligence in new, and yet to be imagined, ways."

Sunlight Labs

Sunlight Labs is a Sunlight Foundation pilot project to prototype tech ideas to improve government transparency and political influence disclosure. We also provide technical support to Sunlight Foundation sponsored projects.

Transparancy Grants

Transparancy Grants provide financial support to enhance independant efforts such as:

• MAPLight.org, which was founded to illuminate the connection between campaign contributions and voting records in the California legislature. The project correlates publicly available information on bills and legislative voting records with political contributions. The online database is searchable by individual legislator, interest group, subject and by bill number. In December 2006, MapLight received a Transparency Grant that will help the organization create a beta version of their database to correlate information on federal legislators. The new database is expected to be available in April 2007.

• Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) to fund the launch of its "Open Community Open Document Review System." CREW had already developed a demonstration version of an online reviewing process that is a really cool tool. It lets anyone review, tag and comment on any of the thousands of pages of documents that CREW has in their possession. (CREW has thousands of pages of governement records as a result of their thorough and repeated FOIA requests.) Our grant will help them build a massive publicly searchable database of every document they receive -- a database put together by citizen journalists. Beta version will be available in late March 2007.

• National Institute on Money in State Politics to continue the development and implementation of their initial Web Service Application Program Interface (API), to conduct extensive outreach to ensure its adoption later in this year, and to develop several custom APIs for journalists and/or academics.

• Center for Citizen Media to develop an Election Year Demonstration Project for citizen journalism in one Congressional district. CCM will oversee the creation of a website that will seek to cover everything that can possibly be reported on a Congressional election, with an emphasis on drawing on the talents and ideas of local citizen reporters. The site will include in-depth biographical and political information on candidates, audio and video archives, campaign finance profiles, first-person reports, links to articles, etc. This project is designed to serve as a model for possible nationwide implementation in hundreds of districts in 2008.

• New York University's NewAssignment.Net Project, a non-profit site that is working to foster journalistic innovation by showing that open collaboration over the Internet among traditional reporters, editors and large groups of reader-reporters can produce high-quality work that serves the public interest, holds up under scrutiny, and builds trust. This project is an experiment in networked journalism, exploring how to blend the experience of veteran journalists with the engagement of passionate amateurs to produce work that neither could manage alone.

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Efforts to Improve Citizen Involvement in Governance

European Union eParticipation Case Studies [6]