E Government in the UK Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

E Government in the UK - Essay Example E government implementation in the UK includes the use of cards with smart chips for passes to pay for school meals, public transportation and for online voting and online payment transactions. Websites are setup for public consultation, paying parking tickets. E-government is big business in the twenty-first century, amounting to over 1% of GDP in most industrialized nations and around  £14 billion annually in the United Kingdom, according to recent estimates (Margetts, 2010). The core factors that occur, when assessing national E government in the form of providing human resources, correspond with the ushering in of globalization and the internet and the balance this new era must maintain between the diffusion of ideas and innovation, as opposed to the replication of practices from one area to the next. As noted by Dempsey, â€Å"E-government is the delivery of online government services, which provides the opportunity to increase citizen access to government, reduce government bureaucracy, increase citizen participation in democracy and enhance agency responsiveness to citizens needs (Dempsey, 2001).† These are the ideal policy changes that E-government is set about to enhance government and private sector practices in the U.K. The problem is this implies E-government practices improve the quality of government practices, which some naysayers argue is not the case. In the Guardian U.K. article, â€Å"E-government is not a financial cure-all,† the author notes that advancements the internet has brought on to be utilized by local and federal governments, as well as private sector institutions in the U.K., does not necessarily mean enhanced quality of these services. The author says, â€Å"When all else fails, reach for the ‘e’. In the past week, both the prime minister and the chancellor of the exchequer have cited e-government to explain how they are going to cut the cost of public services, but not their quality (Cross, 2010).† The author then goes onto point out the key to petitioning for e-government initiatives can be traced to a specific term that dictates how e-government is identified in the public eye, he says, â€Å"The current buzzword is ‘smarter government’, but the basic concept has been policy for a decade, since Tony Blair's first e-envoy, Alex Allan, unveiled the national e-government str ategy in April 2000 (Cross, 2010).† The author goes on to note that after billions of dollars invested in the 2005 E-government policies to improve public services placed UK on a European commission’s annual benchmarking survey as the leader in Europe of the electronic public services.