UN Global E-government Readiness Report 2004

According to the UN Global E-government Readiness Report 2004, Britain is a the top of the table for e-participation among 191 member states of the UN. By e-participation it is meant:

the quality, relevance, usefulness and the willingness of government websites for providing online information and participatory tools and services to the people.

Also, the UK comes third, behind the US and Denmark, in the e-readiness scale, that is 'in delivering information and services through the internet combined with the infrastructure needed to dispense them.'

As to e-partiticiaption, this has three objectives, which are tapped by the index:

a) Increasing e-information to citizens for decision making;
b) Enhancing e-consultation for deliberative and participatory processes; and
c) Supporting e-decision making by increasing the input of citizens in decision making (report p. 19)

On the method side:

21 citizen informative and participatory services and facilities were assessed across 191 countries in e-information, e-consultation, and e-decision making across six general, economic and social sectors. Each country was assessed on a scale of 0-4. The index was constructed by standardizing the scores. (report p. 20)

The measure is qualitative and rater-dependent, an additional score given when the 'national online presence' is assessed for other web-related measures (see report p. 166).

For the sake of testing ecological inference, on the UK side Patrick Dunleavy and Helen Margetts have conducted in 2002 and 1999 'Government of the Web', for the National Audit Office, which aims at assessing broadly the same range of indicators. This might provide some additional insight on the state of e-government in the UK (though things have been in constant flux of recent)