New Report from Stratford Institute – Becoming a Digital Nation: An Evaluation of Provincial and Territorial eGovernment Initiatives
Posted by CLA Govt Library and Info Mgmt Professionals Network on 2012/04/18
via ARCAN-L
The Stratford Institute for Digital Media has prepared a major evaluation of provincial and territorial government web sites. A press release has just been issued as part of the lead up to Canada 3.0 next week. It builds upon the vision of Canada 3.0: the goal of Canada as a Digital Nation by 2017.
The full report is already on our web site at www.stratfordinstitute.ca . For context we applied the same methodology to the web sites of California, Massachusetts and Wales. Our provinces are competitive but have much to do to achieve the full potential of citizen-centric services. We hope this report will stir some discussion and in the process reinforce the work of the CIOs who encounter resistance from departments, hesitant to change their processes and attitudes.
Next week, the Stratford Institute will issue its annual STRATFORD REPORT, presenting the Stratford Index with recent statistics on Canada’s standing in the digital world and a series of authoritative essays on our cultural industries and their experience with digital. One statistic has shifted very little from last year: of everything published in Canada only 13% is currently available online; of archival and audiovisual holdings, less than 1%.
I hope these reports help advance the digital agenda.
Ian
Ian E. Wilson
Excutive Director
The Stratford Institute
6 Wellington Street
Stratford, ON Canada
N5A 2L2
Becoming a Digital Nation: An Evaluation of Provincial and Territorial eGovernment Initiatives
Full report [PDF]
Executive Summary
With the most engaged Internet users in the world, Canada is already a nation of digital citizens. As such, Canadians expect to be able to carry out many aspects of their lives online.
This report, commissioned by the Stratford Institute for Digital Media to be presented at the Canada 3.0 2012 conference and prepared by Brainmaven Research, takes an in-depth look at one area of Canadians’ online lives: interaction with government, specifically at the provincial and territorial levels. Using a three-tiered evaluation framework developed through national stakeholder consultations and modeled from existing frameworks for evaluating eGovernment services, we explore how well average citizens are able to complete basic government services online, such as changing one’s address on a driver’s license; access government information online, such as researching available financing options for starting a business; and engage and interact with their government online, such as tweeting in response to an important civic issue posted on an official government Twitter feed.
Based on a scoring framework that awards points as governments move from using the Internet as a static, one-way communication channel to an interactive, two-way communication channel to an integrated, citizen-centric, multi-channeled web interface, we rank the eGovernment initiatives of Canada’s thirteen provinces and territories in the provision of online services and information as well as online engagement as measured through use of social media.
Top performers in each category are: Québec for its provision of citizen-centric online services; Ontario for its provision of integrated online information; and Alberta for its effective use of social media to engage with citizens online. Considering overall performance, British Columbia rises to the top as the province with the most consistently citizen-centric and integrated eGovernment initiatives in online services (rank: 4), online information (rank: 2), and online engagement (rank: 2). While a provincial/territorial ranking inevitably places some jurisdictions at the top and others at the bottom, throughout this report we observe specific eGovernment highlights that deserve special mention in each jurisdiction.
The purpose of this report is twofold: 1) to serve as an impartial, data-driven analysis to facilitate discussion of and inspiration for the ongoing efforts of provincial and territorial CIOs as they continuously work to provide the best possible online offerings for Canada’s citizens, and 2) to serve as a benchmark for future studies to measure the progress of each Canadian jurisdiction.
Overall, our evaluation reveals that most provincial and territorial governments are moving towards incorporating available technology in their present provision of online services and information. In particular our provincial and territorial governments are creating a citizen-centric online environment, enabling online submissions and transactions for many basic personal and business-related services and taking advantage of technology to create an integrated experience for citizens through the use of deep-linked content that spans ministerial, departmental, and at times even governmental boundaries.
