A survey by KableNET.com has found that more than 80 percent of public sector IT specialists believe the UK government's 2005 target for the delivery of on-line services should be abandoned. Forty-nine percent of private sector IT staff agreed that the target should be dropped in favour of prioritising appropriate services. The majority of IT staff in both sectors concurred that the provision of services that are trustworthy, easy to use and that meet customer needs is very important. In fact, some 70 percent of public and private sector respondents to the survey said the ability to cater to consumers' demands was the most important consideration in e-government.
Six government agencies in the UK are joining forces to develop an electronic platform for land and property information management. The agencies involved in the Acacia Programme are the Ordnance Survey, HM Land Registry, Local Government Information House, Registers of Scotland, Royal Mail and the Valuation Office Agency. Under the programme, the Ordnance Survey's digital map database will be linked with postal addresses, streets and unregistered properties. Local officials, emergency services and property lawyers are among the groups expected to use the service.
Charging fees for access to on-line government services may eventually limit their use, says a new study by Brown University. The report on on-line services offered by city governments in the US found that 11 percent imposed charges on users for the processing of certain on-line services, and 2 percent demanded payment for access to premium sections of their Web sites. The study warned that the use of paid on-line services could eventually result in two classes of information access among citizens.
New government funding in the US will not significantly improve the security of government systems for at least three years, according to Gartner. The research company made its findings known at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2002 in Florida this week. "Although the proposed [fiscal 2003 federal] budget includes a 64 percent increase in IT security spending by government agencies, most of the spending is remedial," said John Pescatore, vice president for Gartner. "The money will go towards fixing known deficiencies, not toward acquiring new and improved security capabilities," he said.
Yemen has started a ten-year, USD60 million e-government initiative aimed at publishing all ministerial information on-line, according to a report on ITP.net. Using KnowledgeView's Rapid Publish content management system, all government Web sites will be connected. The system will enable Yemeni government bodies to classify and display data from multiple sources, including photos, wire feeds, legacy systems and on-line databases.
ITP.net also reports that Jordan is looking to Singapore for instruction on the implementation of e-government. Through a series of high-level briefings and practical workshops, Jordan's Ministry of Information & Communications Technology (MICT) is aiming to incorporate elements of Singapore's e-government initiative into its own plans. Already MICT has based its decision to choose a single centralised data centre on the fact that Singapore uses one centre to serve a similar-size population.
Dubai's 24 government departments have all signed up to e-procurement Web site Tejari.com. Thani Zaffin, the IT director of the Ruler's Court, says the site will become the unified purchasing platform for all government departments and will accelerate purchasing, lower costs and encourage competition. Suppliers to the government have been given three months to register with the site and prepare for on-line trading. The deal with Tejari.com is the first step toward the deployment of a pan-government enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite, due to be rolled out in the near future.
Quelle: Electric News
