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Grading E-Government Around The World
by Danielle Belopotosky
Municipalities in under-developed nations are less likely to have an online presence, according to a recently released study of e-government in cities worldwide.
The report studied Web sites in the cities' native languages and evaluated five key areas, including citizen participation, content, security and privacy, services, and usability. The study was conducted in 2005.
Countries with online populations of more than 100,000 increased from 98 in 2003 to 119 last year, according to the report. On a continent-level ranking of overall e-government, Oceania ranked highest, followed by Europe and Asia. North America's overall score fell below average, coming in fourth, just ahead of Africa and South America.
The largest city in each of the selected countries was used as the barometer for all cities in that nation. New York City represented the United States.
The data show that there continues to be a divide in digital government among developed and under-developed countries. For instance, 71 percent of the cities in Africa have not established official Web sites, compared with 22 percent in Asia and 20 percent in North America. Each of the selected cities in Europe and South America had official sites.
The study, which was conducted by the Rutgers University National Center for Public Productivity E-Governance Institute and the Sungkyunkwan University Global e-Policy and e-Government Institute in South Korea, collected recent data from the U.N. International Telecommunication Union.
In overall e-government, Seoul, South Korea; New York; Shanghai, China; Hong Kong and Sydney, Australia topped the list. The lowest-ranking cities were: Zagreb, Croatia; Chisinau, Moldova; Montevideo, Uruguay; Nairobi, Kenya; and Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
The top cities in privacy and security were: Seoul; Sydney; Zurich, Switzerland; New York; and Hong Kong. Shanghai ranked eighth. At the bottom end were Tehran, Iran; Vilnius, Lithuania, and Warsaw, Poland.
All Oceanic cities, 50 percent of African and 47 percent of European cities have developed a security and privacy policy. Less than 40 percent of North American cities have those policies, while one-quarter of that continent's cities have policies on the use of "cookies" to store date on Web visits and on encryption. No North American city had a digital signature policy.
New York ranked first in usability and second in content and service delivery, but fell off the top-10 charts in citizen participation. Seoul; Warsaw; Bratislava, Slovak Republic; London; and Prague, Czech Republic topped the list.
The report called for a comprehensive policy focused on building capacity for applications, access, content and information infrastructure for cities.
Practical Versus Sexy Technologies
Trade representatives from 30 nations gathered in Geneva on Monday to discuss ways to improve economic growth in emerging nations.
Too often, leaders in developing nations want to "foster the development of sexy, highly innovative technologies" to spur economic growth, John Kilama, president of the Global Bioscience Development Institute, said in a statement. He said the "best opportunities" usually are not the "cutting-edge technologies that make the headlines" but those technologies that are "more easily accessible."
Technologies already in the public domain are more economically feasible for developing nations that lack the infrastructure to support broad and lofty initiatives, Kilama added. Instead of offering "innovative technologies," those nations would be better served by water purification systems, soil remediation or agribusiness projects.
Michael Ryan, director of the Creative Innovative Economy Center at the George Washington University law school, added that "it is difficult for nations to plunge into developing sophisticated technologies when they are just coming out of an agriculture-based economy." Instead, he said nations need an educational system capable of supporting advanced technology.
Ryan's recommendation is to "keep it simple" as developing nations "grow into more innovative technologies."
Executive Program To Cover Intellectual Property
The World Intellectual Property Organization last week announced that it will launch a business program aimed at executives. The Worldwide Academy at WIPO will offer classes on intellectual property that combine research in business and management aspects of IP for the classroom.
"In today's global marketplace, intellectual property is an increasingly valuable corporate asset and a strategic business tool" for managers who want to improve their businesses' competitive edge, WIPO Director-General Kamil Idris said in a statement.
The first two-day program, which will be held in Geneva in September, will review the latest trends in IP management as well as examine how "IP can be leveraged for enhanced and enduring competitive advantage," according to WIPO.
Barcelona, meanwhile, will host a seminar next week to discuss the proposed WIPO broadcast treaty, which has come under fire from U.S. consumer technology advocates and telecommunications companies.
The meeting will focus on the impact of updating broadcasting rights, which would extend copyright protection from 20 years to 50 while granting broadcasters and distributors of Internet content the same rights. International broadcasting rights were last updated in 1961.
Negotiators are re-examining the rights as broadcast technologies converge with digital and Internet technologies. But opponents argue that a new layer of rights is unwarranted and that the treaty would only erect obstacles to accessing works now free for public use. They also argue that the pact could impact the rights of content holders whose material is broadcast.
The treaty is slated to be submitted for recommendation to the WIPO General Assembly in September.
China to Push RFID Technology
The Chinese government is pushing for the development of radio-frequency identification technology, or RFID, to better track goods and services.
China on Friday issued a white book that outlines a policy on developing home-grown RFID tags, People's Daily Online reported. The policy was developed in conjunction with 15 government departments under China's State Council.
China's postal service currently is testing the technology in Shanghai, where RFID tags are attached to packages to track their delivery. But Zhang Zhiwen, a spokesman in China's Department of High-Tech Development and Industrialization, said the technology eventually will be used for anti-counterfeiting, public security, and production control and management.
Zhang also said the technology will be used to manage large-scale events, such as the upcoming Beijing Olympics. "An RFID tag with a visitor's details could be attached to a [ticket] to guard off against false tickets," Zhang told People's Daily.
Last month, China launched its first test of the technology, under which tags were affixed to 1,000 pigs in the Sichuan Province in an effort to track epidemics. The tags also helped researchers monitor the butchering and distribution of the porcine group.
High research and production costs remain a barrier to mass distribution of the technology.
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