The poor, those less-educated, people with disabilities and those whose first language is not English are at a disadvantage when government moves its service online, a panel of e-government (electronic government) experts told a press conference to launch the report on Wednesday. The panel also discussed the global implications of the report and an earlier study on global e-government, in anticipation of a virtual conference, 'E-government for All', scheduled for Nov. 3-14, which has already attracted hundreds of participants from over 40 countries.
The latest paper, 'Achieving E-Government for All: Highlights from a National Survey', was written by Darrell West of Brown University and released by the Benton Foundation and the New York State Forum (part of the Rockefeller Institute of Government).
West defines e-government as ”the delivery of public information and services through the Internet to people and businesses''.
According to him, the major problem with e-government is that ''so little attention is paid to accessibility and the digital divide''.
Report findings show that the average U.S. government website is written at an 11th-grade reading level and more than 63 percent of them are written at a 12th-grade level or higher.
But according to statistics, one-half of Americans read only at an eighth-grade level or below.
The findings revealed that ''some of the agencies that are used by some of the poorest and least educated levels of society have the highest levels of reading difficulty'', said West.
Access to websites by persons with disabilities was also a problem. According to the report, only one-third of government sites met the highest standards of accessibility for the disabled.
''Disability is often individualised. It requires flexibility and accommodation,'' John D. Kemp, chairman of the American Association of People with Disabilities, told reporters.
He said government websites should adopt a ''rolling standard'' on software, so they continuously incorporate software for the disabled as it becomes available.
The report also found that only 13 percent of government websites offer bi-lingual content. Of those, most offer Spanish as the only alternative.
Recent U.S. government census statistics show that over 25 million people speak a language at home other than English. The same census showed that Hispanics recently surpassed African-Americans as the nation's largest minority.
Another problem, according to the report, is the general issue of access. It says that more than 120 million Americans, mostly the poor and undereducated, have no access to the Internet.
Marta Urquilla, director at One Economy Corporation, a non-profit agency that helps underprivileged populations use the Internet, said that certain groups could use websites to access government resources and apply for government aid.
But many of those people do not have access to the Internet, and when they do, do not understand how to use the websites.
West told the conference that governments worldwide face similar problems when they attempt to move services onto the 'net'.
According to a September report on global e-government by West, 45 percent of U.S. government websites offered online services in 2003, compared to 26 percent in Asia, 24 percent in the Middle East, 6 percent in Eastern Europe, 14 percent in Latin America and 5 percent in Africa.
The global e-government report concluded that developing country governments face similar issues of access, as well as problems with updated content and site usefulness.
Many government websites in the developing world, it said, link customers to ”e-services”, which, in many cases, ''typically lead a user to details about a manual service offered by the department ... 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''.
The report also found that many websites were ''blatantly outdated, both in appearance and content''.
Understanding problems of access and determining how e-government can promote development will be an issue when government, industry, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) gather at the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in December in Geneva.
Putting government services online is a chance that must not be wasted, according to West: ”we have a wonderful opportunity here, a historic opportunity, something on par with the printing press, but we need to make sure we deliver e-government for all''.
Quelle: IPSnews, 23.10.2003
