KEY POINTS:
As I wrote in the Herald today, the latest United Nations E-Government Survey puts us 18th in the world overall in terms of e-government preparedness, 10 places behind our Australia cousins.
The report is interesting to look at because it gauges the progress governments the world over are making towards so-called e-participation, where citizens are given the means of communicating and interacting with their government via the internet. While most governments, including our own, have done well at granting access to vast amounts of information that was previously locked up in hard to access formats, the UN notes progress towards taking things to the next level has been slow.
By the next level I'm talking about introducing some of the transactional and participatory aspects of the internet we enjoy in the rest of our lives to our interaction with the Government as well. Currently I have virtually nothing to do with e-government on a daily or weekly basis. I occasionally visit beehive.govt.nz to get access to a minister's press release or speech transcript. I spend a fair bit of time on the MED's website (www.med.govt.nz), at the Companies Office (companies.govt.nz) and have an electronic account with the IRD (www.ird.govt.nz). The Government's jobs site (jobs.govt.nz) is a good place to keep an eye on job vacancies across the public sector.
I've very little need to have much to do on a transactional level with central government and have literally nothing to do with local government. But I'm interested in the possibilities of having greater interaction, particularly in the area of e-democracy, which in election year is particularly relevant.
I'd pay a lot more information to the goings-on portrayed on Parliament TV if there was an interactive element where the public could get involved in some type of electronic forum to put questions to politicians. And usually it's the media that tests the tone of public opinion when it comes to controversial bills before the house, like last year's anti-smacking legislation. Why can't we have online voting on such things, virtual referendums.
I'd rather that than a handful of politicians deciding an important issue one way or other. Such systems would have to be unbreakable to preserve the integrity of democracy but some people have ideas on how to ensure that (http://aardvark.co.nz/rproxy.shtml). It's not an insurmountable problem and I think would have the effect of including more and younger people in democracy.
On a simpler level I'd like an e-commerce-enabled, electronic log-in I can use across all of Government to keep all my dealings with the public sector in one tidy place. It's basically about treating citizens like customers of an e-commerce service. That would be a start anyway.
What would you like to see from e-government in New Zealand and what are the weakest and strongest parts of the Government's online presence in your eyes?
