e-government

Chris Burford cburford at gn.apc.org
Wed Jun 28 16:01:06 PDT 2000


Power without guns? The withering away of the state?

Extract from article in the Economist below

Chris Burford

London

SURVEY GOVERNMENT AND THE INTERNET

IN DOWNTOWN Phoenix, Arizona, people are queuing

in a grubby municipal office to renew their car and truck

registrations. They are visibly bored and frustrated, but

what can they do? All over the world, people dealing with

government departments and agencies are having to engage

in dreary and time-consuming activities they would much

rather avoid.

What is unusual about Arizona is that the locals have a

choice. Since 1996, a pioneering project called

ServiceArizona has allowed them to carry out a growing

range of transactions on the web, from ordering

personalised number plates to replacing lost ID cards.

Instead of having to stand in a queue at the motor vehicle

department, they can go online and renew their registrations

24 hours a day, seven days a week, in a transaction that

takes an average of two minutes.

What is more, ServiceArizona has not cost taxpayers a

cent to set up, and is free to users. The website was built

and is maintained and hosted by IBM, which is being paid

2% of the value of each transaction—about $4 for each

vehicle registration. But because processing an online

request costs only $1.60, compared with $6.60 for a

counter transaction, the state also saves money. With 15%

of renewals now being processed by ServiceArizona, the

motor vehicle department saves around $1.7m a year.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list