Review concepts and approaches of e-government and e-participation; explore the challenges and barriers to e- government and e-participation service delivery; map innovative practices of citizen engagement identify measurement and assessment issues of e-participation and e-government; and learn from country experiences

1. UN Global E-government
Readiness Report
Meeting on e-government and e-participation
Budapest
Seema Hafeez
Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA)
United Nations Headquarters
27 July 2006

2. What this presentation will
outline
 Conceptual platform of the UN Global E-
government Readiness Report 2005
 Issues we are exploring in our current
work on:
 UN Global E-government readiness report
2007-2008
 UN Regional E-government readiness report
for Africa 2007-2008

3. Objectives of today’s Meeting
 review concepts and approaches of
e-government and e-participation;
 explore the challenges and barriers to e-
government and e-participation service delivery
 map innovative practices of citizen engagement
 identify measurement and assessment issues of e-
participation and e-government; and
 Learn from country experiences

4. We hope to employ the insights from this
meeting in developing the :
 UN E-government Readiness report 2007-
2008 and;
 UN Regional E-government Readiness
Report for Africa 2007-2008

5. UN Global E-government
Readiness Report 2005
 A brief Overview of the conceptual and
methodological platform on which the UN
Global Report is built

6. First the UN E-government Report 2005 is available in
hard copy from the UN and it is published online at
http://www.unpan.org/egovernment5.asp

7. UN Global E-government Readiness report
is in 2 parts:
 Part I : UN Global E-government
Readiness Survey
 Part II: Global digital divide issues
stemming from analysis of the patterns of
e-readiness globally
Presentation will focus more on the e-government Survey

8. Conceptual Framework
of the UN E-government Readiness
Survey
UN E-Government Survey focuses on the
issue of how willing and ready are the
governments around the world to:
– improve the access, and quality, of basic
economic and social services to the people ;
and
– involve them in public policy making via e-
participation.

9.  The UN Global E-government Survey
framework places the e-government
readiness in the context of the overall
pattern and the level of development of
a country.
 It takes a ‘basic needs approach’ to
development in its assessment of e-
government readiness. It assesses
website services such as for
education, health, labor, social welfare
and finance

10. The conceptual question behind the Survey
is:
how ready are the countries to employ
ICTs to provide citizen information,
services and participation

11. The objective of the UN E-government
Readiness Surveys is to provide a:
comparative assessment of the 191
countries in the use of e-government and
ICTs for delivery of public services;
benchmarking tool for monitoring the
progress of countries, now three years in
a row, as they progress towards higher
levels of e-government and e-
participation service delivery.

12. E-government is defined as the use of ICT
and its application by the government for
the provision of information and public
services to the people.
The E-government Readiness Index is a
composite index comprising the Web
measure index, the Telecommunication
Infrastructure index and the Human
Capital index.

13. E-government
readiness Index
Web Measure
Index
1/3
Infrastructure
Index
1/3
Human Capital
Index
1/3

14.  The website assessments in the Survey
are base upon an ascending five-stage
model based on a state’s online presence.
 Countries are scored on the basis of
whether they provide specific products
and social services

15. The UN Global Survey also includes
the only global E-participation Index
 The e-participation index assesses “how
relevant and useful the e-participation features
of government websites around the world are;
and
 how well they are deployed by the governments
for promoting participatory decision-making

16. E-participation Index
 E-Participation index is a qualitative
assessment of the quality, relevance
and usefulness of government
websites in providing online
participatory tools to the people.

17. Of the lessons learnt from 3 years of UN
Global e-government readiness report the
following are of relevance to the discussion
today:
 Approaches to e-government programme
offerings differ from country to country.
 The “how” of what countries choose to display
on their websites is a function of “what” they
want to focus on and “why” they want to focus
on the issue(s)

18. For future UN work there is a
need to study and learn from
worldwide patterns and models
of :
• e-government
• e-participation

19. Following on the basic framework of
the UN work on e-government
readiness, the basic questions we are
exploring are:
Today’s meeting sets the first
discussions in exploring what is e-
participation and e-government:

20. Questions:
1. what constitutes e-government
and e-participation
2. what should be the objectives of
e-Government and e-
participation in the service of
the citizen

21. The way forward contd…
3. is one conceptual model of 'how to'
for e-government indeed feasible or
desirable or each country needs to
tailor it according to its level of
development
4. What are the existing e--
government / e-participation
endeavors in countries around the
world

22. The way forward contd…
5. What are the challenges and barriers
to e-government and e-participation
service delivery from the government
perspective
5. What are some of the innovative
practices of citizen engagement and
reasons for their success;

23. Finally, with this meeting, we
are beginning a process of
dialogue between all
stakeholders to develop a
framework of e-government
for the future work of the UN.

24. Thank You