US releases eGovernment satisfaction results - useful benchmark for Australian sites

ForeSee Results has just released the findings of the latest quarterly US eGovernment satisfaction survey, looking at citizen satisfaction with over 100 US government websites.

Available as a PDF download, the E-Government Satisfaction Index (PDF 1.2Mb) uses a uniform system to compare satisfaction across US sites and was selected as the US government's standard measure in 1999.

Based on the results of this latest survey, there has been a small increase in average satisfaction to 72.9 percent, the first rise in a year.

The report does a good job of identifying the US government sites with the highest level of citizen satisfaction, which can be used by Australian government as good benchmarking examples.

It identifies the major priorities for improvement across agencies, with search topping the list (88% of agencies identified it as a top priority) followed by functionality at 59% and navigation at 41%.

The benefits of higher satisfaction have also been identified in the report, being that highly satisfied customers (scores of 80 or more) are;

• 84% more likely to use the website as a primary resource
• 83% more likely to recommend the website
• 57% more likely to return to the site

The use of a standard government website satisfaction methodology, as I have previously suggested, makes it much easier for government agencies to compare their performance, identify and learn from successes and address issues. It is also an excellent accountability tool for Ministers and agency heads.

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Why can one man in a cave out-communicate the government of the world's superpower?

There was an interesting admission from the US Army Secretary last week in Inside Defense as reported in the Wired Danger Room Blog,

Senior Army leaders have fallen behind the breakneck development of cheap
digital communications including cell phones, digital cameras and Web 2.0
Internet sites such as blogs and Facebook, Army Secretary Pete Geren said at a
trade conference on July 10. That helps explain how "just one man in a cave
that's hooked up to the Internet has been able to out-communicate the greatest
communications society in the history of the world -- the United States," Geren
said.

"It's a challenge not only at home, it's a challenge in recruiting, it's a challenge internationally, because effective communication brings people over to our side and ineffective communication allows the enemy to pull people to their side," Geren continued. He said the Army brass needs to catch up -- fast. But how exactly?

One solution: "Find a blog to be a part of," Geren said.

Young people embrace social media "as a fluent second language," he added. Army leaders have to do the same.

The article went on to describe some of the initiatives underway at the US Army to help it prepare for the new world - including adding blogging to their graduate school curriculum and allowing a tiny office of Web-savvy mavericks at West Point to create Army-specific Web 2.0 tools (blogs, forums, social networks) for soldiers.

At the same time the US Air Force is using blogs, wikis and personal profile pages to better support its missions, per a Network World article, U.S. Air Force lets Web 2.0 flourish behind walls.

I expect that the Australian armed forces are watching and learning from our US counterparts. The online channel can deliver major benefits to the training and operations of a defense force.

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What's the level of security risk from government's internal IT staff?

Over the last week a rogue IT employee in the San Francisco Department of Technology Information Services has held the city to ransom - locking down many of the city's services by refusing to disclose an administration password.

The employee, Terry Childs, helped create the city's FiberWAN network , used for controlling the city's emails, law enforcement records, payroll, and personal records. It controls 60 percent of the city's municipal data.

Using his access as administrator, Childs stopped other authorized network users from accessing parts of the network and gave himself access to parts from which he should have been restricted.

To compound this, the city apparently did not keep adequate system backups, and so cannot restore the system from an earlier state.

Fixing the situation is likely to take several weeks and cost in the order of $500,000, including hardware and system changes.

Childs was taken to court by the city, with a US$5 million bail set - that's five times as much as is usual for a murder in California.

Why did Childs lock down San Francisco? Network World reports in IT administrator pleads not guilty to network tampering that,

He became erratic and then hostile with colleagues after a recent security
audit uncovered his activity on the network, according to a source familiar with
the situation.

An article in Wired, San Francisco Admin Charged With Hijacking City's Network, discusses how Childs could have brought down the entire San Francisco city's network if he'd wanted to.

Fortunately for San Francisco, as reported in eFluxMedia, Childs finally turned over the password to San Francisco's Mayor on 24 July - claiming that only the Mayor was trustworthy enough to have the password.

Do you know how much power your department's IT team has?

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Obama pledges to appoint a national cyber advisor - does IT need more senior representation in Australia?

As reported in NextGov, Barack Obama, the Democratic Presidential candidate, has pledged to appoint a direct report focusing on online security.

"As president, I'll make cybersecurity the top priority that it should be in the 21st century," Obama said during a summit on national security at Purdue University. "I'll declare our cyber-infrastructure a strategic asset, and
appoint a national cyber adviser, who will report directly to me. We'll
coordinate efforts across the federal government, implement a truly national
cybersecurity policy and tighten standards to secure information -- from the
networks that power the federal government to the networks that you use in your
personal lives."

Security analysts praise Obama's pledge for a cyber chief

Today most of the money supply and trading in the finance sector, our telecommunications and entertainment industries, a significant proportion of our retail activity and a number of government initiatives are focused on, or reliant on, the use of robust and secure broadband and online services.

I wonder when a similar approach to Obama's proposal will be adopted in Australia?

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The first language of the internet is now Mandarin

The China Internet Network Information Center has reported that China's online population has now reached 253 million people, a smidgen more than the US's 223 million, coming from a Sydney Morning Herald article, China steals internet crown from US.

Of course the 300 million English speakers in India will help redress this balance as more of them come online, however the future of the internet will not necessarily be written in English.

At the moment the revenue for China's online services is estimated at only around US$5.9 billion, compared the the US$21 billion estimated for the US.

China's online revenues are reportedly growing at 30 percent per year, so at some point this balance as well will be redressed - making this, at present, at least a US$15 billion dollar opportunity.

As yet I have not seen much in the way of Chinese language sites from Australia, however if I had to pick it, I'd rate this as possibly the largest area for growth today for the online sector.

I wonder what types of grants and support the Commonwealth and state governments will be offering Australian innovators to assist them in supporting Chinese language versions of their websites - after all China is becoming our most significant international trading partner, and Chinese speakers are a significant market worldwide.

I also wonder when Australian governments will get more serious about multi-language websites - as the Europeans already do by default.

In areas such as tourism, trade, business and finance, supporting multiple languages online will become very important in supporting our relationships with other nations.

We are coming from a cold start, in a very real sense we live in a single language country, with English being the language of government, commerce and education. Whilst we have a large number of multi-lingual people, our institutions are not set up to be multi-lingual in a real, embedded sense as they have to be in other parts of the world.

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