Review and Analysis of the U.S. and UK Government Websites

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Review of the Websites
The Overall Content of the United States Sites
The Overall Content of the Britain Sites
The Impact of the Data contained in the Websites
Impact on Individual Citizens
Impact on Organizations
Conclusion
References

Introduction

Since the 1990s, internet has been expanding at a very fast pace and it has had a significant impact on how organizations and governments operate. During the era, the most technological advanced Western countries, such as the U.S. and Britain, have been working side by side to lead the way in establishing e-government.

E-government is a worldwide phenomenon to improve service delivery and internal efficiency of governmental organizations. With the application of new internet technologies, the developed countries are now leading the global phenomenon of e-government.

Today, government agencies, management consulting firms, and IT companies have been exploring and documenting the best practices for e-government initiatives. It can be seen that the development of e-government has followed the development of e-commerce after being proven that businesses have been stimulated by it.

Below, I’m going to provide a broad overview in e-government practices among two different nations, the U.S. and Britain, and show how they have impacted the society as a whole, to individual citizens and organizations.

The government websites are very essential in circulating information between various departments within the government. The sites also provide the information to the public. The websites are designed in such a way that the security issues such as web site hacking are greatly minimized.

The websites to be reviewed and analyzed are those of the UK government and the ones for the US government. They include the Official Site of the British Prime Minister’s Office, the United States Senate website, the UK Parliament website, USA Government made easy site, and Directgov website.

Review of the Websites

Even though these websites are intended to serve almost a similar purpose, they contain different information. The websites are supposed to avail essential information not only to the governmental departments, but also to the public, which includes different organizations and the citizens of these countries.

The UK websites, the official site of the British Prime Minister’s Office and the UK Parliament Website, and Directgov offer a variety of information to the users (The official site of the British Prime Minister’s Office, 2012; United States Senate, 2012; UK Parliament Website, n.d.; USA Government Made Easy, n.d.; Directgov., n.d.).

The information in the websites include departmental business plans, the government expenditures, the Whitehall officials, the government contracts, meetings within the ministries, and other important government data. They also contain information regarding the bills and legislation. They have a section in which users can register in order to receive the latest news on a regular basis via their email address.

The two US government websites mentioned above provide a range of information to the users (United States Senate, 2012; USA Government Made Easy, n.d.). The United States Senate provides information regarding the states in the senate and strategies used to run the House.

The USA Government Made Easy website, on the other hand, contains issues such as government jobs, government auctions, unclaimed money, government agencies, grants and other financial assistance programs offered by the US government. Like the UK websites, the US sites also provide the users with chance to register and receive latest updates on a regular basis.

The Overall Content of the United States Sites

The content for the U.S. government websites are loaded with useful information. There are introductions for every resource that explains everything in detail which help users who are not familiar with how the governmental system works.

For example, in the House of Representatives website, there are learning tools which aid educators and students to learn about how the house works, how the congress makes laws, and etc. Moreover, in the websites, the public are even able to access a variety of disclosure documents, such as the financial disclosure reports and legal expense fund disclosures.

I believe the overall presentation for the U.S. government websites are excellent. They are very user friendly and the information presented is very neat and in a proper manner. The websites are simple too without having too many writings that are scattered all over the web, which often times cause the users to get confused.

It is also very easy to obtain the information that users are trying to obtain without having to click too many times. Moreover, each of the websites has links which enables users to go from one government website to another government website. Overall, the websites are very easy to use and I believe it is due to their simplicity in design.

The Overall Content of the Britain Sites

The Britain governmental system is different to that of the U.S. in a way that they have different names for each of the executive and legislative branch. For example, in the U.S. the legislative branch is made up of the House and Senate, or also known as the Congress, whereas the Britain, it consists of Parliament.

And, the first impression that I get after visiting the Britain government websites are the fact that they are not as user friendly as the U.S. government websites since they don’t have a clear and concise explanation for each of the terms in detail which make users kind of hard to understand what they are really all about. It is also hard to get the data available to the public since the websites do not really name the data properly.

Even though they provide the public with quite a bit of information and data, the information presented is not as neat as the U.S. government websites. Therefore, it is kind of hard for users to retrieve the right data. Moreover, the websites seem a little bit too complicated; they simply have too much writings on the websites.

It makes users to have difficulty to navigate around the websites easily without having to read all the presented materials. Furthermore, the websites do not provide the links which enable users to move from one government website to the other.

Each of the Britain government website mostly focuses only on what they are specialized at. Overall, the Britain government websites are not as user friendly as the U.S. websites because they are simply too complicated and the information presented are not clear.

The Impact of the Data contained in the Websites

The five websites are freely accessible. They do not require any log-in details before one gets the opportunity to access the information contained in them. Anyone can access the government information in the websites provided he or she opens the right site. This has been done probably to avoid excluding anyone from the information, since the two governments feel that the information is important to every citizen.

The websites have been designed in such a way that they prevent the occurrence of unnecessary issues that normally arise when a user’s details are made public. The sites protect and ensure that the emails provided by the users to enable them to receive the updates, are not accessed by any other user apart from the owner of the details.

The websites are also designed in such a way that they contain various links within the site that enable the users to access information related to different fields.

For instance, the USA Government Made Easy website has links such as ‘list of government agencies’, ‘government auctions’, and ‘government jobs’ among others. This has the effect of increasing the speed with which a user gets to navigate through the information contained in the links.

Both the UK government and U.S. government websites have put in place the relevant measures to help them comply with the legal requirements, hence avoiding cases of litigation.

For instance the USA Government made easy website, which offers a diversity visa program, ensures that every citizen is accorded equal and fair chances during the lottery process. There are also measures put in place to ensure that users who practice malicious games such as hacking the government sites are arrested and prosecuted.

Impact on Individual Citizens

In the past, it used to be hard to get in touch with government agencies, especially with its long hierarchical structure, people must go through all the steps in order for them to be able to reach the right division.

Today, with the aid of new technologies, citizens are now able to communicate with government agencies with more ease since e-government is concerned about providing quality public services and value-added information to citizens now.

By doing so, the government can make interactions between government agencies and citizens smoother and more efficient, thus the government will be able to build a better relationship with the citizens. For instance, the usa.gov website is providing the public with a variety of online services, such as passport application and price comparison services, so that the public can get fast services without having to go through all the troubles.

Impact on Organizations

Besides facilitating the interaction between government and individual citizens, e-government also focuses on the internal efficiency and effectiveness of operations, resembling enterprise resource planning. This enables the government agencies to work together more efficiently with the organizations, thus they have better coordination and collaboration between each other.

Moreover, e-government can make the processes even more efficient by having to provide a one stop service to businesses/organizations as well. By making the processes simpler, it indirectly helps the organizations to be more productive because less time is needed to do more of something, so that the time saved can be used to serve better purpose for the organizations.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I have provided a broad overview of the current practices of leading e-government countries, and explained how they have impacted the society as a whole. E-government has been established in the first place in order to deliver services, engage citizens, and improve performance. A seamless integration, quality information, and good administrative processes are needed for effective e-government programs.

Even though so, some e-governments are still lacking the required resources and infrastructure for its successful transformation. Many governments are still trying their best to integrate e-government programs in their processes, and I believe e-government should be implemented on every country since it provides services to the citizens and enhances the efficiency of government operations.

References

Directgov. (2012). Public services all in one place. Web.

The Official Site of the British Prime Minister’s Office. (2012). Web.

UK Parliament Website. (n.d.). Web.

United States Senate. (2012). Web.

USA Government Made Easy. (n.d.). Web.

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