Singapore's e-Government efforts have once again ranked highly in global e-Government reports. A study by researchers at Brown University has placed Singapore in the second position, ahead of the United States and Taiwan. Singapore scored highly in the study of 198 countries and analysis of over 1,500 websites, and was noted for having well-organised government websites with useful links and advanced search engines. This year's ranking for Singapore was a notch up from 2006.
According to Brown University, Singapore scored high marks for online services, publications, databases, privacy policies and security policies. About 73 per cent of the Singapore government sites which the University analysed had online services and all sites assessed had publications, databases, privacy policies and security policies.
Top five countries in e-Government in 2007
| Rank |
Country |
| 1 (1) |
South Korea |
| 2 (3) |
Singapore |
| 3 (2) |
Taiwan |
| 4 (4) |
United States |
| 5 (6) |
Great Britain |
* 2006 ranking in parentheses.
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| The SINGOV portal was commended for being well-organised and customised to users' needs. |
The report also gave special mention to the SINGOV portal (http://www.gov.sg/), and noted that the site was well organised and customised to users' needs. Useful links, an advanced site search engine, RSS news feed and customer ratings were features that gave Singapore an edge over others for being citizen-centric in online service delivery.
Commenting on Singapore's ranking, Ms Pauline Tan, Senior Director of the Government Chief Information Office, Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) said, "In a world where infocomm plays an integral part in the way we live, work and play, our citizens' lifestyles have also changed. In order to meet the changing needs and expectations of our citizens, the government needs to be at the forefront of embracing technologies that can improve our lifestyles. The government recognises that putting services online brings about greater efficiency and accessibility of public services because they save time and are easy to use."
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Ms Tan: Putting services online brings about greater efficiency and accessibility of public services.
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To date, there are about 1,600 government e-services for citizens and businesses in Singapore. "Based on our 2007 e-Government Perception Survey, almost nine out of 10 who transacted with the government did so electronically at least once in the past 12 months," said Ms Tan. Of the e-services, the most frequently used include the Central Provident Fund Board's my cpf online services; Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore's payment of taxes; Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority's Bizfile; Customs' TradeNet application; and the Housing and Development Board's loan instalments and rental transactions.
The Singapore government also recognises that interactive features and multimedia contents such as audio, video and animated graphics have the potential to make websites more vibrant and interesting, said Ms Tan. These features are already being incorporated into some of the websites. An example is the National Day Parade website at www.ndp.org.sg/infocomm.
The latest ranking by Brown University follows another study by Accenture in June this year, which ranked Singapore first in its annual e-Government report. Singapore also ranked first in the World Economic Forum's Global IT Report's Government Usage & Readiness Sub-indices.