E-government report card: C+

Being able to file complaints online, pay tickets and renew licenses are just the tip of the iceburg when it comes to the potential of e-government, but cross-agencies are having a hard time cooperating and creating standards for ease of implementation, reports the Government Leader. 

"E-government" starts with simple informational sites and transactions with citizens,” said John Kamensky, a senior fellow at the IBM Center for the Business of Government and former deputy director of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government. “But it continues with greater transparency of government and greater citizen interaction with government.”   

"The tendency of agencies to focus on their own mission, rather than on cross-agency projects, isn’t going away. Yet the next levels of accomplishment will require further orientation to the needs of the citizen. “With the right online services and information, citizens can solve their own problems and make their own decisions,” Kamensky said." 

The good news is government websites are getting more user-friendly, and citizens are more likely to blog about their elected officials, making  them more accountable.

"For example, the Baltimore City services site lets citizens choose issues from a menu—barking dog, uncollected trash and so forth—to report problems. It can even be more unstructured than that. "Software exists that can sift through, say, citizen blogs, and detect patterns to their comments," Kamensky said. Citizens may find themselves doing more to run their government—remotely—than ever before."