Image002_1 Accenture has published the latest of its annual e-government readiness reports. Overall it has the UK sliding into the third division, continuing (from memory) a reasonably steady decline in relative position over the years.  The UK fares considerably worse on the ‘customer service maturity’ dimension, which they say, probably rightly, is the most important (and is where we line up with Mexico and Belgium).  Intriguingly, we come a firm last for the proportion of citizens who are e-government pessimists (those who disagree that e-government makes government more efficient and accountable).

Having said all that, one of the more pleasurable elements of my job a few years ago was to rubbish the methodology of reports like this  (at least whenever they failed to show the UK in a positive light), which was usually depressingly easy.  This though is one of the better ones, as well as probably one of the longer lived and has some interesting general material as well as the country by country analysis.