Member States, through the UN General Assembly Resolution 66/288 entitled “The Future We Want”, have reaffirmed that democracy, good governance and the rule of law, at the national and international levels, as well as an enabling environment, are essential for sustainable development, including sustained and inclusive economic growth, social development, environmental protection and the eradication of poverty and hunger.

Member States have also stressed that ICT is facilitating the flow of information between governments and the public, and have recognised the power of communication technologies, including connection technologies and innovative applications, to promote knowledge exchange, technical cooperation and capacity-building for sustainable development.

• What is e-government
• E-government nomenclature
• Regional groupings
• Income classifications
• Government website URLs
• Population data

What is e-government

E-government has been employed to mean everything from ‘online government services’’ to ‘exchange of information and services electronically with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government’. Traditionally, e-government has been considered as the use of ICTs for improving the efficiency of government agencies and providing government services online. Later, the framework of e-government has broadened to include use of ICT by government for conducting a wide range of interactions with citizens and businesses as well as open government data and use of ICTs to enable innovation in governance.

E-government can thus be defined as the use of ICTs to more effectively and efficiently deliver government services to citizens and businesses. It is the application of ICT in government operations, achieving public ends by digital means.  The underlying principle of e-government, supported by an effective e-governance institutional framework, is to improve the internal workings of the public sector by reducing financial costs and transaction times so as to better integrate work flows and processes and enable effective resource utilization across the various public sector agencies aiming for sustainable solutions. Through innovation and e-government, governments around the world can be more efficient, provide better services, respond to the demands of citizens for transparency and accountability, be more inclusive and thus restore the trust of citizens in their governments.

E-government nomenclature

Government-to-Government (G2G) involves sharing data and conducting electronic exchanges between governmental actors. This involves both intra- and inter-agency exchanges at the national level, as well as exchanges between the national, provincial, and local levels.

Government-to-Business (G2B) involves business-specific transactions (e.g. payments, sale and purchase of goods and services) as well as provision on line of business-focussed services.

Government-to-Consumer / Citizen (G2C) involves initiatives designed to facilitate people’s interaction with government as consumers of public services and as citizens. This includes interactions related to delivery of public services as well as to participation in the consultation and decision-making process.

Regional groupings

Regional groupings are taken from the classification of the United Nations Statistics Division.

See http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49regin.htm

Income classifications

The World Bank classifications and data are grouped by low-income, middle-income economies. According to the World Bank ‘…low-income and middle-income economies are sometimes referred to as developing economies. The use of the term is convenient; it is not intended to imply that all economies in the group are experiencing similar development or that other economies have reached a preferred or final stage of development. Classification by income does not necessarily reflect development status…’.

See http://www.worldbank.org/data/countryclass/countryclass.html

Government website URLs

The latest assessment of UN member websites was carried out during April-August 2013. It should be noted that since websites are being continually updated a few countries were under construction or not available during that time. Whereas the sites were checked several times during that period, fresh websites and/or added features on a website may have come online in the time that followed. Government website URLs will likely be updated at the time of the next Global Survey.

See https://publicadministration.un.org/egovkb/en-us/Resources/Country-URLs

Population data

The population data for the Country Profiles are taken from the United Nations Population and Vital Statistics Report: Series A. Table 2: Population, latest available census and estimates, latest available data.

See http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/vitstats/seriesa2.htm