Australia ranked lucky 13th in egovernment - down from 7th position in 2008

The Waseda university in Japan has released its 2009 Waseda University International e-Government Ranking, the fifth consecutive report on how 34 leading countries are progressing in their egovernment activities.

Australia managed to reach 13th position, down from 7th in 2008. In fact Australia experienced the second greatest year-on-year fall in ranking of any country (only Hong Kong did worse).

Australia ranked 6th in 2007, 8th in 2006 and 6th in 2005.

The top ten for 2009 included Singapore (who beat the US into the top position for the first time in the ranking's history), USA, Sweden, UK, Japan, Korea, Canada, Taiwan, Finland, Germany, Italy and Norway.

We did beat New Zealand, who came in at 19th place (down from 15th last year).

The ranking found that network preparedness was a requirement for success, with countries with more mature (and faster) networks being more effective at launching and maintaining egovernment initiatives.

It also found that usability was a key factor in the adoption of egovernment services and that more countries were treating this as a key priority.

Other factors included a shift towards a central online portal for nations and the support and scope of the whole-of-government CIO in terms of egovernment initiatives.

Web 2.0 adoption was also highlighted as a factor, particularly in the success of Asian countries - who now hold 4 of the top 10 positions in the ranking.

Australia scored in the top ten for two areas of egovernment, Interface Function and
Applications and e-Gov Promotion. We did not reach the top ten for the other three areas, Management Optimization, National Portal or CIO in Government.

A press release with details of the ranking is available at www.giti.waseda.ac.jp/GITS/news/download/e-Government_Ranking2009_en.pdf.

A press release for last year's ranking is available at www.obi.giti.waseda.ac.jp/e_gov/2008-02_World_e-Gov_Ranking.pdf