27 June 2002

State Services Minister Trevor Mallard today welcomed an international survey that ranks New Zealand as third on a global e-government leadership index.

The report, Benchmarking E-government: A Global Perspective, was produced by the United Nation’s division for Public Economics and Public Administration, in association with the American Society for Public Administration.

The report examines at the approach, progress and commitment to e-government on the part of the UN's member nations during 2001. Of these, 169 have some form of national government web presence.

New Zealand was ranked third in the report’s overall global e-government leadership index, behind the USA and Australia, and ahead of Singapore, Norway, Canada, UK, Netherlands, Denmark and Germany. The survey method involved:

- Examining the nature of a national government's official web presence and rating it against a five level model of e-government maturity. The rating ranged from having an emerging web presence (level 1) to having a seamless online presence (level 5).

- Looking at other measures of how well positioned UN member states were to deliver e-government. These measures include the development of ICT infrastructures, and measures of human capital.

Trevor Mallard said the report’s results are very encouraging.

“It tells us that on the basis of the UN methodology New Zealand is making really good progress in developing e-government. Only nine percent of UN member states (17 nations) nations were found to have the capacity to conduct government transactions online.

“As a nation, we are well positioned to continue this pleasing trend - we have a well developed ICT infrastructure, it is comparatively well used by New Zealanders, and we also have a well developed level of human capital.

“Overall, this study confirms that New Zealand appears well positioned to meet the challenges of transitioning to an information society and knowledge economy.

"There is however no room for complacency. The State Service Commission's

e-government programme is still only part way through its longer-term

mission of making the Internet the dominant means of enabling ready access

to government information, services and processes," Trevor Mallard said.

The survey can be found at: http://www.unpan.org/egovernment2.asp#survey

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