The Government Administration and Home Affairs Ministry said Sunday (Jan. 6) that the country ranked sixth last year in the U.N. Global E-government Readiness Index among 192 nations and second in the world body’s e-participation index among 189 nations.
The readiness index is a composite indicator comprising indices on measures for the Web, telecommunication infrastructure and human capital.
The participation index is a qualitative assessment of the quality, relevance and usefulness of government Web sites in providing online participatory tools to the people.
Sweden ranked first in global readiness, followed by Denmark, Norway, the United States and Netherlands. Korea was fifth in 2005.
The ministry said the country fell one notch because of no e-transaction systems in certain government Web sites; lack of links between Web sites of the central and provincial governments; and fewer credit points for the number of mobile phone subscribers and PC owners.
Other Asian countries that ranked high in the readiness index were Japan (11th) and Singapore (23rd).
As for the e-participation index, Korea rose from fourth in 2005 to second last year. The United States came first in the 2007 poll, followed by Korea, Denmark, France and Australia. Singapore ended up 10th and Japan 12th.
In other indices, Korea showed an improvement from three years ago. The literacy rate rose from 98 percent in 2005 to 99 percent last year. School attendance went from 95 percent to 97.24 percent over the same period.
"Korea received a good score because of its active responses to people’s opinions gathered through online bulletin boards when deciding on policy," the ministry said, citing the e-government Web site (www.korea.go.kr) and the homepage of Chuncheon, Gangwon-do (Gangwon Province) (www.chuncheon.go.kr) as excellent examples of state-run sites.
The U.N. launched its annual e-government survey in 2002.
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Quelle/Source: Korea.net, 07.01.2008
