Anand Giridharadas is one of my favourite writers at the New York Times and this time his reflection on the merits of open societies is particularly thought provoking.

“A stunning idea has entered respectable American discourse of late: that China is not just an economic rival but also a political competitor, with a political system that, despite its own flaws, reveals grave flaws in American democracy and might be inspiring to wavering nations. [...]

The question the reappraisers seem to be asking is whether their belief in bottom-up, spontaneously ordering, self-regulating societies blinded them to other truths (as their enthusiasm for China risks blinding them to the cruelty and violence of autocracy). They are asking: Can openness go too far? Can public opinion be measured too frequently? Can free speech sow disorder? Is the crowd really smarter than the experts? Can transparency hamper governance?

Or, to put it in the terms of an influential 1997 essay, is the bazaar always better than the cathedral?”

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Going online from a personal computer to access government services has been commonplace in some countries for several years. Now, in Estonia, Singapore and many countries in between, many of those same services are available through your cellphone.

“In emerging markets in particular, governments understand that E-gov services simply won’t reach the masses unless they become M-gov services,” said Gabriel Solomon, senior vice president for public policy at the GSM Association, an industry group representing cellphone operators. “Across sub-Saharan Africa, the fixed-line and PC infrastructure is only available for the elite, whereas the mobile access platform is near-ubiquitous.”

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The method of selecting representatives for presenting the view of a constituency was deployed at the time when internet and mobile technologies were not available and there was no method of making a collective decision on policies to government the society.

In today’s times , most of the population have mobile phones that can be used by the citizens to communicate their opinion on important policy issues. Should not we therefore relook at the ways of people representation and amend the democratic processes accordingly?

m-GovWorld is an Indian initiative to create an observatory for mobile government developments and developing a community of stakeholders with the aim to enable acceleration of adoption of mobile technologies by government agencies.

The comments from readers are welcome to suggest innovative ways of making democracy more vibrant using mobile technologies where citizens can be continuously involved in policy decisions rather than voting once in five years.

(via MobileActive.org)

Can governments truly boast of services that rival the private sector’s? Leadership in Customer Service: Building the Trust, Accenture’s annual report tracking the evolution of Internet usage and customer service in government, says yes and no.

Accenture interviewed 46 high-ranking government executives in nine countries to assess government services delivery, and concluded that governments using a wide range of technologies and modes of operation are on par with the private sector. Those lacking integrated technologies for robust, online services have a long way to go to reach service delivery matching that of the private sector.

The report also concluded leading governments recognize that true citizen-centricity means removing — through simplification and re-engineering — as much work as possible from the system for citizens.

In addition to improving government services, greater IT automation must also gain the trust of the public, a theme of this report. For e-government to succeed, governments must build trust and comfort with those services, and tap into the public’s preferred modes of communication, whether by telephone or over a network.

• Read full story (Public CIO Magazine)
• Download report (pdf, 8.5 mb, 108 pages)
• Download executive summary in Italian (pdf, 357 kb, 18 pages)

(via eGovernment News)

Asian countries once again dominate e-government ratings, taking three of the top five spots in a global e-government study undertaken by researchers at Brown University. South Korea, ranked 86th last year, earned the top rank, followed by Taiwan, Singapore, the United States and Canada. The study shows that 29 percent of government agencies around the world are offering online services, compared to 19 percent in 2005.

The sixth annual survey conducted by Darrell M. West, director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy and American institutions at Brown University, and a team of researchers evaluated online government Web sites of 198 countries around the globe. The researchers evaluated government Web sites based on two dozen criteria, including disability access, existence of publications and databases, presence of privacy and security policies, contact information, and the number of online services. The Taubman Center released previous studies of global e-government in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005.

This year’s study reviewed 1,782 government Web sites in 198 countries during June and July 2006. A variety of different sites were analyzed, including executive, legislative and judicial offices as well as such departments and ministries of the government as health, education, foreign affairs, interior, finance, natural resources, foreign investment, transportation, military, tourism and telecommunication.

Researchers found that 94 percent of Web sites have online publications and 72 percent have links to databases. Only 26 percent (up from 18 percent in 2005) show privacy policies and 14 percent present security policies (up from 10 percent in 2005). Software provided by the company Watchfire Inc. assesses whether websites provide assistance for the vision- or hearing-impaired. According to this software, government Web sites are still lagging on disability access. Only 23 percent of sites provide disability access, although this is up from 19 percent in 2005.

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(via E-Government News and Public CIO)

Lately there is a growing trend within governments and public authorities to separate citizen-focused online services from institutional communications, similar to e.g. how a telecom provider separates its customers services from its corporate information.

Here are some of the best examples of governmental service websites we know of. Sites are in English except where indicated.

• Austria: help.gov.at
• Belgium: Vlaanderen.be (in Dutch)
• Canada: Seniors’ Info, Service Alberta, Service Ontario
• Denmark: Danmark.dk (in Danish)
• Finland: Suomi.fi
• France: Service-Public (in French)
• Ireland: Citizens Information
• Netherlands: Overheid.nl (in Dutch)
• Norway: Norway.no
• Portugal: Portal do Cidadão
• Singapore: eCitizen | My.eCitizen
• South-Korea: G4C (Government for Citizens)
• Spain: 060 (national, in Spanish), GenCat Serveis (Catalunya)
• Sweden: Sverige.se (in Swedish)
• UK: Directgov
• USA: FirstGov.gov