Texas best state for e-gov

Which state is the best for e-government? Brown University's Taubman Center for Public Policy addressed the question recently for its seventh annual report. And the winner is ... Texas. Followed by New Jersey and Oregon. Utah, last year's number 1, fell to the fifth ranking, the Salem (Ore.) News reports.

The results show progress has been made on several fronts. In terms of online services, 77 percent of state and federal sites have services that are fully executable online, up from 73 percent last year.

In addition, a growing number of sites offer privacy and security policy statements. This year, 71 percent have some form of privacy policy on their site, up from 69 percent in 2005. Sixty-three percent now have a visible security policy, up from 54 percent last year.

Thirty percent of sites offer some type of foreign language translation, compared to 18 percent last year.

On the negative side, citizens are being asked to cover more of the cost of onlines services, with the number of sites charging a fee moving from 2% to 12%. Support for disabled users was up, with 54% of federal and 44% of state sites supporting W3C standards, up from 44% and 40% last year.