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French Government Online-Why Isn't the U.S.?
DullTrev asks: "Looks like the French are pushing forward once again with their online government plans. The BBC News site has this article about the new portal about to be launched. The article says the portal 'will give every citizen a personal internet portal allowing them to pay taxes online, register a child for a state school, or be reminded that their regulatory car inspection is due in a month's time'. The UK government has had this portal up for a while, and are steadily expanding their services. This is all within the EU government systems that are (not surprisingly) encouraging online government all over the place. How does this kind of thing compare to the US?"
Simple answer: Because we're an order of magnitude bigger. More population. More beaurocracy (yes, I know it's mis-spelled). More variables. Instead of having 30 million personal pages listing the same information, we need well over a hundred million pages, with different senators, different information, more extensive tax data... not to mention, someone has to decide who's in charge of all this. Does the IRS have to run the site? Who else would?
Well this is a great idea. This way the entire population can cyber-surrender! Yup, it will be much easier for the French to surrender now that they can do it online! No more waiting for dusty old diploments to figure out terms. This was the surrender can be done quickly and everybody can go back to being on strike. Oh by the way French Government, thanks for your offer of troops and planes now that all the fighting is done!
the us gov't doesn't have time to deal with the population. it's too busy handling the lobbyists, having expensive fundraisers, etc. we should consider it a privledge that our gov't takes the time to give public speaches and appearances.
most of the stuff that these other governments are putting on their portals are done at the state level. and you can already pay taxes on-line at IRS.gov so realy there is no need for this type of portal at the federal level. however the states should, I live in Michigan and we have a very nice one here
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Population of US: 250 million
Population of France: 50 million
And France has nothing like states' rights that the US has to cope with that makes us a patchwork of sometimes conflicting laws.
It's quite clearly due to the EU's supperior socialist political system. What other difference can explain how a continent covering tens of countries, each with their own languages, ravaged by two major wars in the last century, beat the United States with this?
The US has become complacent about it's own abilities. The writting was on the wall when Russia, a socialist state, beat the US into space on all counts. Only by killing many of it's own people, did the US manage to place a man on the moon and finish the space race. The US should have realised, we should have learnt, but we insisted on ignoring the lessons that the space race were teaching us. The US has always been a technological backwater since the space race finished, and this goes to prove it. Without socialism, we may end up regressing back to beeswax candles and log huts. Take heed.
What is firstgov.com?
I just realized that my car inspection ran out a long time ago... stupid US not reminding me!
The US has gone back 40 years in the past 6 months, that is why the US Government isn't online.
Privacy concerns will hold off the US Government attempts to do something similar. (regardless if most Americans are ignorant of how just little privacy when it comes to personal records they have - they still hold tightly to the thought of "I still have some left"
Plus, I think the US is a little busy now with something more important than being online.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Now a second question is if it works
(the answer is 'non').
The US has had a government portal at firstgov.gov for quite some time.
The US has the problem that there are many State and Federal agencies that would have to communicate and cooperate. They are about as likely to do this as Bill Gates is to write an SMP patch for the Linux kernel. European countries have a history of central management and of delination and communication between agencies. It is this infrastructure that enables these sorts of projects to be built.
The US is liable to get disparate information portals that provide for specific needs in a variety of ways. The odds however of someone who lives in CA and has a business in NY having a single portal for all of his needs is practically zero. One web company had this idea and failed miserably. The nature of the US goverment makes it hard to imagine this happening. Germany however with its Federal system and different history and social infrastructure is liable to do this.
The main reason for the US not getting there is the social infrastructure that actively encorages States to go their own way and buck the Washington line. This tends not to exist within the European countries as even beauracrats at the local level are considered under the same banner as those at the national level.
An EU wide portal is also a possibility as there is a history of inter-country cooperation on large scale projects (Concorde anyone) and there is that ethos of distributed and deliniated goverment in a manner that does not exist in the US.
Its more a social thing than a technology thing.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Well, there is FirstGov (www.firstgov.gov).
Canada has a huge push towards online government. Take a look.. here
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
The problem with doing this in the US is that we have states. Most of the time when the average citizen deals with governments he's dealing with state or local government, not federal. For instance, your car inspection, property taxes, birth certificates, death certificates, licenses all these are given out by your own state. People don't really deal with the federal government much. So the problem is setting up a centralized webpage to mirror the decentralized government regulations we have. Some states do things differently this would make it complex to set up a page like this in the US.
nuff zed.
Because we're FUCKING MORONS.
I can file and pay taxes online, both state and fedreal, check and renew vehicle registration, register for schools, both secondary and post-secondary, check if i'm a registered sex offender :), or on the FBI's most wanted list hehe.
Really though, we i would have to agree with the first post(WOW an ONtop FP!!! kudos!!) We are a slightly larger country. And we have these things called states. Most things listed in the French Online Govt are done by our state level Govt. And, at least my state, impliments quite a few online accesses. I still say there could be more though, but it is getting there. And as for a Federal Online Govt... well... off hand there's not much i can think of that i'd really need/want access to, at least nothing that i don't have alread.
That, and security converns... Identity theft is already too easy with many multiple databases. But, if you could get someone's SSN and pull up EVERYTHING in the MasterList. WOAH.. too easy!
I can't help but think of things like universal IDs and the like, and cookies harvested without our knowledge to be fed into our corporate masters' databanks. Add to this the unlimited potential for mischief when hackers break the websites down and, uh.
What does a website give us that the tried-and-true paper forms and human interaction doesn't?
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
I love the idea of being able to handle civil affairs over the net. I am just afraid that this would push further the idea that internet access is some how an entitlement. There has been alot of talk about the 'digital divide'.
"some policymakers in Washington are calling for the creation of a new entitlement to address what they perceive as a national civil rights crisis"
- Heritage Foundation
Personaly I think this is a load of crock. The internet is a wonderfull tool but we are not entitled to internet access. But this is a little offtopic sorry.
A few months ago I got a virus infection and the doctor gave me some anti-biotics. Out of curiosity I went to the FDA website and was surprised to learn that the drug companies can do some of things to certify their drugs online.
The US government also has an IP network physically separate for classified information. I have seen a lot of work get done over it.
Admittedly, I haven't actually filled in the forms properly (tax return? No thanks! TV license? No thanks!), but it all looks pretty good.
Tom.
Oh arse
.... if US people stop considering the rest of the world like poor 3rd zone country that still live in the midieval ages then they may start to be worlds "democrats".
... and you may became a wonderfull nation.
....
First stop the death penalty then stop arms selling, then kick-off your puppy president and change for a real one that will be ellected without any familly help.
Then, stop your spying, pay your UNO due, accept the Tubbin Tax,
Please don't miss me, i don't have anything against US citizen (which are nice peoples) but i do have agains decision takers (cf. US world policy).
Come on don't be so selfish
I was just looking at a job ad in the paper - probably a bit ambitious for me, but why not give it a go? I thought. "Head of Web Services" for the UK Home Office; that'd look great on the CV, looks like a fun job too, and well paid. "For details, write to:..." it says. Ah, but look - there's an URL for the outsourced recruitment firm they've retained! I'll use that.
Check it out on their website: you couldn't make this up...
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
In France, there is less distrust in (and more reliance upon) the goverment.
In the U.S., "Big Brother" is bad.
In France, "Frère Grand" is good.
France and England are both dominated by a large central government. That kind of government situation lends itself to one large storehouse of information. The United States of America is a union of (ideally) independent states.
The federal government's purview does not cover the information that is of most relevance to the citizenry. The service that the federal government could provide would be limited to searching for information and paying taxes (which the majority of us don't do anyway because of the payroll deduction, but that's a separate discussion).
The utility of this service to the average citizen would be far less than the cost of developing it and maintaining it. This service is better left up to the states where the people live. Those states who want it can pay for the development and maintenance of their own portal, but we all shouldn't be forced to pay for something that would not benefit us.
The biggest reason why there isn't a national portal for most of this stuff is that many of the functions are a matter of state law.
Car inspections, school registrations etc are not federal government functions.
Also I think civil liberties minded folks would be a little concerned about a centralized data base that had all this information in it. Besides the potential for official and unofficial abuse, you just know someone would come up with the idea to raise money by selling the database.
I suspect that France has a much higher percentage of citizens with real ISPs than the United States, so naturally this idea would fly beter over there.
Also, and I am generalising here, I think it's generally known that Europeans tend to be more liberal to new systems and technologies than North Americans.
I think it will be at least 2005 before something like this becomes the norm in the US. And then another 5 years to get people to trust it after it's hacked (because it would inevitably be overhyped, integrated with .NET and passport, and get out the door before it's ready.) [Please let's not let this discussion turn into an overblown anti MS rant...]
Well, because some fucking hacker moron will hack into the system and get Rush Limaugh elected president or something. No thanks.
Although we don't have a single portal for all the services, in Brazil we can already do a lot of our dealings with the government through the net. All taxes (and there are lots of them), for instance, can be paid on the net. Although we don't have a convenient car inspection reminder, we can look for tickets we may have overlooked and pay them online. We can also obtain information about a used car we're planning to buy to see if it's inspected, not stolen and has any outstanding tickets.
Dude! Have you ever tried to have a dinner party with six guests? Fairly easy, right? Try to put on the same dinner party with 28 guests. All you need to do is make more, right? It ain't quite that easy.
The United States is a big place.
InitZero
Not sure how valid a comparison it is with those saying "Not in the US as we've so many federal differences" but just last week I paid my local (n.b. similar to state, up to a point) taxes (Taxe d'habitation) here in France via the central gov portal site.
Really does seem to work OK. One can only hope that one benefit will be to improve efficiency and result in lower taxes. However I somehow doubt it!!
With a plethora of agencies and organizations, nevermind the separate laws and requirements of 50 disparate states, I'm amazed with what we do have.
Many states have their entire law libraries online, as well as the DMV/RMV vehicle registries.
If it weren't for the need to have an updated photo, we could get our driver's licenses renewed online....
We take this for granted, www.irs.gov, www.treas.gov, www.whitehouse.gov, FBI, CIA. I mean, other than taxes, what does the average citizen deal with when dealing with the federal government?
N/T i said
I'm sorry, but the potential problems like to arise from poor security in such a system make it a thing to be avoided in my books. Considering the sympathies of the current administration, I don't think we have to stress ourselves out to figure out what company would get the contract to implement the system. When we can be confident the system will have adquate security, sure ... but not now.
I don't think whoever submitted this story meant to say that the US gov't has a lousy or non-existant presence on the web. He just asked for a comparison between European and US pages.
Personally, I think the US Federal and most state webpages are pretty good tools for locating information. It is certainly a hell of alot easier than navigating a maze of phone numbers or finding someone that you know who already knows the information that you need.
The only thing that many government websites are missing are electronic forms. That lack has more to do with budgetary constraints than anything else though.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
thanks for your offer of troops and planes now that all the fighting is done!
Yeh, I saw a news story on France3 rebroadcast on EuroNews the other day. Basically complaining about the Americans the whole time. In the end I wasn't convinced that the France3 reporter knew what we're all supposed to be fighting (that is, terrorism and not ego battles). I hate to generalize about the French after years of living abroad, but deal with them is their love of "protagonism" and then the typical complaining when they aren't leading the orchestra
I've been swashdotted -- Elmer Fudd
http://www.firstgov.gov
Because our governments are too damn stupid!
He doesn't know that clicking on an e-mail attachment (that seems to come from secretary@dutchgovernment.nl) could let a trojan loose on his system, one that becomes active AFTER authentication with smartcard/iris scan, one that changes keystrokes but doesn't show that to the user.
Doing things like this is acceptable for companies, because they are profit based and take risks all the time. For governments, it is totally unacceptable that this is possible, but unfortunately they have spent literally millions of euro's on pilots and can't reverse the process. Somebody has to make clear to them that the internet + computers == not a secure infrastructure, but well ... is there anybody who will listen?
My apologies for my bad english, I'm Dutch.
--
If code was hard to write, it should be hard to read
Your first click to the US Federal Government is here:
http://first.gov/
don't believe everything you read:
we don't have any central administrative website yet. And the government is talking about having something within the 2005 horizon. Which is nearly synonimous with "whenever"... I lived in the US for 2 years (still nostalgic I must say) and there really isn't much difference between the 2 countries as far as internet awareness goes when dealing with the administration. In fact the only time I can remember using internet for administrative purposes was when coming back from the US: I managed to contact the tax authorities in France by email, which was already quite an achievement given that they even seldomly answer the phone!). Otherwise it's possible to download administrative forms over the net (but you still have bring it to the administration) and to fill your taxes online (but I think that's something you can do in the US too, can't you?)
The US took its first major step last month with the Microsoft settlement: MSN will be the "US Government online."
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Some of these services are already available online depending on what state you live in. Things like registering your kid for school, registering your car, and paying tax (not Federal of course) are all done on a state level here, which is the way it should be. One of the principles our country is founded on is the belief that many things are best done on the state and local levels. Putting these services online at a federal government level just wouldn't make much sense, and it would clearly take power away from state governments, to do things in a way that is best for their specific residents.
Here in Massachusetts, we can already do most of the stuff you mentioned online. You can renew your driver's license, car registration, etc. online at the RMV's web site. You can also pay your state taxes online or by phone. People in the US can electronically file with the IRS, too.
We are a country based on decentralized government. Centralizing web services that should be run at a state level just doesn't make sense.
What a crock. I bet everyone in the US wants to pay 70% of their income to taxes to support corrupt governments and a huge social welfare system. And all the small businesses out there are just dying to have the government regulate them to death. I spent 4 years in Europe and it sucks. Nice place to visit for the history, but horrible to live in. The US is years ahead of everyone else in every thing. Maybe you should get your jobless rate to less than 10% before you say how good the European economy is.
They both have their taxes and special laws !
;-)
That also conflicts (cf assignations of france to EU council on several subjects).
Population of US: 250 M
Population of EU: 380 M
Sounds better
It is even in three languages English, Greek and Turkish, and works in Opera for Linux. So, I would say it's pretty cool.
Leonid Mamtchenkov
I don't think this is flamebait at all. It seems that the original poster was just wondering if this is a good thing, considering France's track record of bending the will of foreign governments and regulations when it spots something online it thinks is offensive. I don't think it's wrong to keep this is mind. I hope the upcoming moderators undo this...
According to this NY Times article, the US government is actually looking to implement their own secure network for their various agencies to share that would be separate from the larger network. I found the paragraph below quite interesting when taken in the context of the open-ness that this thread is asking about: "Some in the technology industry fear what they see as the implications for the Internet: a separate cyberspace system for the government, they say, might create a trend in which other institutions as well would begin building their own networks separate from the Net. Civil libertarians, meanwhile, ask whether the idea would make the government less accessible to the people."
Just because France is doing something doesn't mean that the US should do the same. We'd have serious problems if that was how we decided our future (by France's example).
You forgot that contract about pollution control that the US still ignore or fail to comply.
Ah, and that 'world police' behaviour which made the US so much enemies... trying to force other countries to adopt to the human rights but still killing people in the name of the law (death penalty).
Same for me, I know a lot of US citizens and they are nice people, no discussion about that. But the US government is really medieval, out-dated and sick.
I refer you to the Netherlands, Ireland, Portugal -- each has unemployment 5% and strong social protection.
Didn't anybody here see Startup.com?. It was a documentary (screened abut half a year ago in a few theaters) about the travails of a startup known as Govworks. As a side point, one of the things I found interesting about this film was how many of the characters were so like people I had worked with. (I think it should be required viewing for anyone who has been or is involved with any kind of internet "startup"...preferably before one gets too deeply involved.)
You're using her as bait, Master!
Did anybody say "Yahoooooo"?
Oops, no wait....
If it is not on fire, it is a software problem.
"EU government systems"
The EU has their Europa site running for a fair few years, but I wouldn't exactly call them a government, they have their parliaments and (largely unelected) members but their power is limited to arguing and bickering amongst themselves, they have no real impact on anybody apart from draining a few billion from the member states, but having a talking shop full of self-edifying people is cheaper than war.
The Council of Europe have quite a nice site too, it's very useful for finding out about their latest facist policies such as the cybercrime treaty. It's great for marveling how unelected groups can wield so much power. The CoE actually banned MEP's from their committies because they weren't invited to take part in forming policy, so you ban the already spuriously electec individuals from a nonelected group that decides your laws, shameless, how I love the EU.
Of course non of these sites are useful for practical matters such as paying taxes registering your child for school etc, because the EU doesn't actually do anything remotely practical apart from inventy abstract laws that are largely ignored by all member states apart from Britain or Germany.
I do however hold the technical groups such as the ETSI, Eureka in high regard.
I can't believe what I just read.
:(
I'm french, I live in France, I pay my taxes in France, and I can tell you that French Government has a really bad policy about internet. Taxes Paying Portal exists, but many many many errors occured this year, and many many many people had to pay penalties, and some even paid their taxes twice !
Same thing about french government putting laws online, 6 months after they were voted.
Believe me, French Government is not online, and French Government is not internet-compliant
____
nico
Nico-Live
285,573,701 from the US Census page (www.census.gov).
As for the population of France, the 1999 French Census came up with 60.185.831 people, which I'll round up to 61 million.
But, yes, point taken. The U.S. has about 4 times as many people as the French.
Furthermore, I will add that our government also supports the use of Linux, as this this page states, people can download a java version of the forms filling tool, that allows online filing of a zillion of various things.
Ah hahahahahahahahahahah!!!!
Oh, I'm sorry, you're serious? You think you're more open minded? If you were open minded you wouldn't try to push your ideals down our throats, which you're doing in this post.
'Scuse me ? History ? Congress ? Laws that are over 100 years old ? What social welfare ?
The US certainly is years ahead in some technology sectors, but the US government is ancient and a big failure.
Actually, it wasn't the French gov't, but 3 french association (one jewish and two antiracism association IIRC, but maybe 2 jew and 1 antiracism).
That ain't because it comes from France that it has been made by the French government, you know. We're less communist than the professional trollers think.
sigmentation fault
The point is, the more information you need to process, the more efficient you need to be, to do as good a job.
The US Govt used to have -some- computer systems. But a certain President Bush got rid o his e-mail account. Anyone know who that idiot could be?
The banks in America seem to handle online transfers. There are plenty of companies which do online checking. The weather information centers can handle an entire continent of meteorological data, online. Volume ain't the issue, guys! GWB's hatred of the digital is.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
UK has unemployment well below 10% and has 20% income tax (rather than 70% - not sure where that figure comes from).
England is one of the countries in the UK. The other 3 are Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Each one of the has unique characteristics and laws. Only Ignorant Americans think that that UK is England.
Since you're Dutch, I think I'll respond to your query (don't ask why). Look a few articles down from the front page. Notice the article "Your Rights Online: Libraries Asked To Destroy Reports, Databases"? Do a search on previous /. articles talking about viruii/trojans hitting government sites, which you probably already have. You'll quickly notice the US government is moving away from the Internet, because that keeps them safe from "terrorist acts". It also keeps knowledge of government activities secret unless publicly disclosed by the media reading sanitized reports written by the government PR department.
Just because one country does it one way does not mean we have to follow. Why is no one complaining that Russia has a crap economy, but ours runs reletively well? Why isn't anyone complaing that our healtcare system is superior to other countries and we need to change?
Idiots again.
http://www.state.pa.us/
The way they do some of their fill out forms is absolutely retarded though (activex???? java??? For a FORM???)
What about the VAT, gasoline and everything else combined.
I'm always wondering why we can't be more like Europe and especially the French... wait, no I'm not.
Hardball is on MSNBC, not Fox.
Fair point, but what about on the state level? Since a lot of the aspects pointed out in the submission are actually run on the state level, rather than the federal level, surely we should at least see some of the larger states doing something? Are there any states that have looked towards doing this, or are doing this? The least the federal government could do is provide the necessary links to the state websites. Currently if I type www.gov.us I get nothing This, IMO, would certainly be a great entry point to the network?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
They were discussing this on the Screen Savers and someone mentioned that in case France gets involved in another war, there would be a button on the home page entitled "Surrender"
Shut yer fat pusshole or Uncle Jed'll give yer a whoopin'. ... or to put it another way - One mans Pilgrim Fathers are another mans unwanted religions nutters.
Don't yer never forget that we is the crud that got thrown outer that there Yoorup due to us bein' so fat and stoopit
It's simple. I lived in France for 2 years and like the other posters said they do have a smaller population. But, consider aslo their government is more centeralized, there is little privitazation in the telcom industry and (this is the big one) they have the minitel http://www.minitel.fr/ system already in place. Granted is sucks, you have to pay for it and there is a huge gap between the haves and have-nots (just like in the US) but having a portal to the govt through a system that is already in most urban, Franch homes is not that much of a streach.
Bonjooooouuuuuure, ya cheese eatin' surrender monkeys!
My guess is that it would be more likely for state governments here in the US to do something similar just due to the size and differences between the states. Things like schooling and car inspections are controlled more by the states the the US government. The IRS allready allows for paying US taxes over the interent, and states like Mass have state taxes done over the internet. I bet that most of those other things can allready be done, there just might not be a central personalized portal in each state.
...we're busy.
Huh, he said health care... sucker.
I've never heard of this until I checked out the UK site. There's such a thing as a "TV License" ? You pay 10 pounds a month just for the privilege of watching tv? This sounds like a scam, unless I do not understand it. My understanding from visiting their site is that everyone who owns and uses a tv to watch programs needs to pay, and if you don't have a license and get caught, you get fined 1000 pounds. WTF? Can someone explain this to me?
The Polish Government has such a portal, but if you want to do business with the Polish government you have to be running windows and have a proprietary piece of Windows software*. Sun had to get a PC with Windows so they could do business in Poland.
With Asscroft and Bushleague in control and on the MS payroll, you know what will happen here.
*Apple Poland fought to have the software ported to other platforms but lost.
photosMy Photostream
What about it? You think the US doesn't tax those as well? What colour (Oh sorry, color) is the sky on your planet?
Some things mentioned that are being done in Europe can be implemented in the U.S. on a federal level, such as IRS, immigration, etc. But most actual services to the citizens would have to be done on the state or county level, like voter/car/school registration and workers benefits.
We just don't have the same structure as the Europeans to have a one-stop-shopping comprehensive service portal.
If the Constitution were being more closely followed these days, the on-line services of the federal government would actually be almost nothing.
From the article :-
"It's good that you can pay your taxes online..."
Oh, in the UK we had that too and it went wrong.
"...but you should also be able to discuss what happens to those taxes."
We did have that too, until it was censored, talk about 'spin, I expect the French to follow soon along with burning any book that mentions the word 'Nazi' and 'Collaboration'.
France doesn't send troups !!! We are sending soldier specialized in rebuilding to help the ONG (non gouvernemental organisation) to their work of redistribution.
Just make me laugh talking about things you don't even know ? where were american soldiers in bosnia, in croatia, in serbia to protect the civilians, to make funds come where there're expected.
We lost in in the balkans a lot more soldiers than the US in any other war than the us since vietnam. So please, just have a look in the recent history before making those dumb comments ! and please, by the way, please tell your gouvernment to pay its debt to the UN so maybe the UN could be more helpful than erasing a zillion house in desert to catch 200 peoples presuming the 10th army in the world.
lol. American people are just not interested about what happens outside their beloved country.
and last but not least, please tell your gouvernment to keep throwing stuffs away from your b52. one bomb. one milk. one bomb. one bread...and yes, I'm sad for the 4000 collateral damages they did in NY.
zehavoc
It's the paperwork. Paperwork needs people to process. Lots, and lots of people. By not moving any services to the WWW, they ensure their own job security.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
Considering there's an overhead to everything, it'd actually be easier for the USA than for france. If you want excuses, blame your government to spend money on... Well... on stuffing their pockets.
Who's voting? Me? No... You are... Blame it on yourselves...
I got karma to burn, mod me down into oblivion if you want, but you(collectively) are still responsible for what's bad (as well as what's good) so don't start saying "yeah, but others have an easier time" and move your arse.
One shall speak only if what one has to say is more beautiful than silence
Gas here topped out at $2 a gallon this year and now is a lot less. A far cry from $5 a gallon which is the average in Europe. The highest sales tax in the US is around 8.5% when combined with some state and local sales taxes. VAT taxes are 15%-20% in Europe. Even on cars. It's ludicrous that one has to pay 15% and up sales tax on a car. And how much do they take out of your paycheck for the socialized healthcare? In the US it's nothing because the employer pays it.
I will summarize as quickly as possible:
1.) It is on-line. Various federal agencies and states have on-line system. Massachusettes has a nice one. Remember: United STATES. We aren't kidding about that. I can pay federal and state taxes on-line. No good reason to do that but I can do it.
2.) The government doesn't do as much in the States thus much of what the European Govs provide is provided in the US by private corporations. The private corps have on-line systems. In fact, they have had them before the internet was popular. My Electric company had a bbs years ago. My Phone company deducted directly from my bank account using the old bank networks etcetera.
3.) Scale matters. The United States is emmense. There are 285 million people now and we are growing faster than some developing nations now in terms of population. I had some European friends in Massachusettes once that asked how many hours it would take to visit Texas by car.
I had to laugh. How many DAYS would it take just to hit the border of Texas which itself is the size of Germany.
Thus, getting 50 states to merge their already existing net systems into a federal system when the state systems have been working for years seems a rather daunting amount of effort for little gain.
In fact, I honestly don't think this would work well in other European nations such as Italy. Even in Italy things are more decentralized than you would think.
There isn't one way of doing this and it isn't all that important actually. We think the net is all important but in reality it just leaverages the existing technology and systems we have.
I think the ATM has changed my life more than the web. Money coming out of walls? What a wonderful country!
My guess is that they US govt stays offline, because it doesn't want to lay itself wide open to terrorists.
European countries individually would not make interesting targets, which is why the French are not so bothered about it.
The French troops in Bosnia, are they the same ones that say "Bon Jour" to the indicted war criminals that they see each day? If it wasn't for the Rusians Brits and Americans you would all be driving Volkswagons.
I've read all you Slashdotters responses to this. A lot of you seem to think that the US government is less online because of the size of the country. Sounds like an excuse to me.
I have an idea. It's just a little thought. Please don't mod me down as a troll. Here goes... Perhaps, just maybe, the UK and French governments are more on-line than the US government because, (deep breath), they are better organised than the US government. There, I've said it. I'm probably going to burn in hell now.
I think Americans often confuse their country's size with superiority. Yes, America is very big, but let's imagine for a moment that it was much smaller, say a fifth of the size, with a population of say, 50 million. Do you think it would be that 'superior' globally if that were the case? Would it have the most Nobel prize winners? (that would be the UK I think) Would it have the highest earning potential per capita? (That would be Switzerland) Would it have the freest citizens? (Probably Denmark). Would it have the highest standard of living? (Norway, according to the UN). Sorry, but I think the answers to these questions are no, no, no and no. America is a very big country, yep. But don't confuse that with an innate superiority.
> ... and well paid.
£35247 - £50801 is not well paid for an IT Professional in central London, where a decent flat costs £150,000-£250,000. This is about right for 2+ years post grad experience, it's low for a deptartmental head.
UK unemployment stands at 3.1% , it's around 5.4% in the US unforuntely due to recent events, the UK is more aligned with the US on economic terms and isn't like a proper European country, where you have unemployment at 9.1% in France which is a all time low! Of cource you can't legally work above 35 hours a week either, unlike the UK
Don't be surprised that some countries have things that the US don't... you are so arrogant...god...
Because the German soldiers like to march in the shade! Thank you!
- They were **THE** pionneers in instituting an online society.
- They're not anglo-saxons.
- De Gaulle did not like using a phone.
- They're catholics
- French culture values intellectual achievement
- The education system does not make specialists, but generalists.
- France values education and culture.
French is not only about perfumes and good food, it's also about technology, science, research and, most importantly, FREE EDUCATION.More than 20 years ago, they decided to implement the fabled Minitel in order to eliminate paper telephone directories.
So the french don't have that innate distrust of the State. Thus, they not only do not continually question what the State does, but they don't view working for the State as something demeaning, so the best minds are naturally attracted to work for the State so everyone benefits.
He himself took maybe three phone calls a year, and made perhaps only one (on a good year) phone call on the same year (he didn't have a phone on his desk). Therefore, telephone infrastructure lagged sorely behind most countries (and was the butt of cruel jokes, like Fernand Raynaud's fabled: "Hello New-York, gimme the 22 at Asnières", which is said to have humiliated french telephone network engineers more than anything else. So, upon De Gaulle's resignation, the authorities embarked into a record-breaking research program to enhance the french phone network.
The retarded phone network was a blessing in disguise, because in most cases, switches simply bypassed mechanical switching and they went from manual operators straight to digital packet-switching.
This gave France a head-start in digital communications, which enabled them to quickly implement the Minitel network.
The french didn't have much choice but either to listen to the priests or to dump them, which is what they've been doing en masse for the last 200 years or so. (By contrast, a protestant can either find a sect that tells him what he likes, or simply make-up one of his own)
Republican ideals naturally spurns religion as something which enslaves humanity, so the State is quite rigorously insulated from the church. Official education is strictly non-religious (law forbids teaching religion in public schools), so therefore, the french put much virtue in Science (and the fabled cartesian spirit also helps). So it is quite normal that the french will rigorously embrace new technology without having any philosophical qualms about it.
And it does so far more than financial success (you just can't get rid of the the old scatholic foundations...), so plenty of people are drawn into scientific studies. Scientists enjoy recognition and are respected. So, naturally, luddites do not really get listened to...
This enables a great penetration of advanced technological ideas throughout society.
French scientists have a shallower knowledge that spans far more areas of interests, so they are more able to connect seemingly disconnected technologies together.
A most successful and innovative american company has fully understood this idea. Researchers working for the Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing company are forced NOT to spend 10 to 15% of their research budget on their primary research area. But they are quite free to spend it investigating side-effects discovered through their research. That's why they have so much innovative products.
Since then, it is only natural that education is freely available to anyone. The cream of the crop is also enrolled in the grandes écoles where they are given the best education for free, for which they then serve the State as the fabled highly-competent senior bureaucrates.
Good stuff such as renewing drivers licenses, pay property taxes, restaurant inspection scores, filing complaints, etc etc. They seem to be adding more all the time.
The US government led the world in getting on the InterNet. One of Gore's jobs (skip the "he invented the internet" b.s.) was to see that all agencies had an internet presence. And they did. The US is larger seller of goods on the Net mainly through its surplus and bonds sites.
But as web sites must re-invent themselves every other year to stay on the tech forefront, the US effort may have stalled, allowing late-comers like France.gov to take the lead.
From CNN: Special Forces in Afghanistan
From ArmyTimes.com: More special ops troops enter Afghanistan
From BBC: Allied Forces in Afghanistan
If you don't know, please refrain from posting and use Google...
In the past year, I:
1. Filed my federal, state, and local taxes
2. Registered my car
3. Paid the bill for my water and trash (city provides these services)
4. Complained about a fallen tree over in the park next to my house.
5. Checked my property tax account balance.
6. My wife applied for college and registered for classes.
I did all of this online. Never spoke to anyone on the telephone or visited an office. I live in Ohio.
I think most people don't realize how much of this stuff is already there or else they are waiting for it to become "free."
The fact is that a national government portal would be helpful only for things that the national government does. I already have a city portal and a state portal and they are quite useful. The private sector fills in the gaps nicely (bill payment)
our phone company changed twice the number of digits in phone numbers. From 6 to 8 and then from 8 to 10.
That's enough phone numbers for the whole mankind
or that's about 150 phone numbers for each livin french citizen....
While we have a larger government, that's not the main problem.
The problem is the fact that there are 50 separate governments, each handling those matters individually, and probably with different systems.
While some information would be/could be/is available federally (like tax stuff, from irs.gov), almost everything else and a whole lot more is handled by the *state* government
School, state taxes, car stuff, police info, etc. Most dealings you have with the "government" here are actually dealings with the state government.
What makes our government so huge is mostly things like welfare and social security and the other hand-out programs. And while those could be put on line, I doubt that would help many slash dotters.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I know its too late for anyone to read this but I guess I'll point it out. While all of your say size and complexity of the US government is the issue, I must disagree.
The Fact is that the majority of voters in the US don't care about the government being online. Congress doesn't push for online government because %90 of the voters don't care. Corporations on the other hand with their lobbyists, have pushed the IRS online. If you paid taxes like the corporations do, you would want it to be as efficient as possible so you wouldn't have to pay as many accountants.
Again its not size or complexity, its an issue of who wants it to be done. Remember American Slashdotters, you are a minority if you do everything online. Just because you do it online doesn't mean the rest of America does.
Slashdot is an anagram for Has Dolts, and I am Dolt number 468543
The DMV in NY is about 1.5 years behind in paper work. I had just got notified in August 2001, of a lapse in my insurance that happened in Dec. 99.
It would be really nice if you could do DMV stuff online but I don't see how they're going to get it done at this pace.
But volkswagons are pretty nice these days, esp the ones they sell in the US.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The UK government portal allows you to register a username that has a password the same as the username. This is appalling, considering the portal might be used for personal information.
I thought the general trend in the US Government was to take away information...
We woulden't want those pesky terrorists reading our laws now ...
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
Only by killing many of it's own people, did the US manage to place a man on the moon and finish the space race
Ok, 3 people died in a tragic accident, but that was on the ground, not in space per se. Those were the only people to die before we had people on the moon.
Also, the EU isn't doing this, france is doing this. Several states (which are responsible for this kind of thing) have had e-govs for quite a while.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Even if there weren't stagging bureaucratic obstacles to bringing more of the US goverment's functions online, you'd have a hard time convincing the paranoid in government to do so. When the National Security Adviser asks the media not to play Bin Laden's speeches on the news, when the FAA, NRC, and other agencies are pulling all but the most basic information from their web sites, the last thing on any lawmaker's or agency's agendas is to put more information online.
:wq
Nice one. that is the funny est thing i've read in the last few weeks.
Thanks.
salute.
First of all, your "gas" is cheaper than most of Europe, as the US is a major producer of oil & gas.
Second, you seem to have a laughable grasp of reality. When you say "how much do they take out of your paycheck for the socialized healthcare? In the US it's nothing because the employer pays it." I can't help but roll on the floor and laugh. You don't think that the money your employer pays for your healthcare might just work out to be the same thing that my government removes from my paycheque to pay for a National Health Service? The money your employer pays does not pop from thin air in front of them, it has to come from somewhere. Hint: From money that would be paid to you.
Same difference.
Here is a stort in Irelands Sunday Buisness post which purports to be a reflection of an official EU report on "connected" governments in the EU / EFTA area.
The top 10 are :
1. Ireland
2. Norway
3. Finland
4. Sweden
5. Denmark
6. Spain
7. Britain
8. Portugal
9. France
10. Austria
the US government can't successfully hold a census ("you you mean you didn't want those forms sent to the wrong addresses") or an election ("oh, you mean you didn't want to vote for Nader?") - what are the chances of a project this massive getting pulled off?
Besides, Dubya has his priorities straight, the money would of course be better spent on like, you know, a couple of tanks or something.
sic transit gloria mundi
Ok, poor lonesome defensor of democracy,
if I said your president will be a queen called Elisabeth II and you would be all drinking tea at 5 O' if Lafayette was not there 250 years ago, you would be laughint until you die. I've got the same reaction.
When I see "
the same ones that say "Bon Jour" to the indicted war criminals that they see each day"
coming from a people whose government has helped talibans for ten years, who gave arms, missile and stuffs, from a country who has installed and helped near all the dictatures in the world , I just want to laugh.
of course our government is not so good, we helped
mobutu, and a lot of tyrans in center africa but we are not claiming that we are the gardians of the world and we are not claiming that all we do is good and the rest is evil every time we bomb someone.
And more important of all, when we vote, this the one who got more than 50% who win, not the looser so the majority decide not the minority. yes, that's the democracy.
So as we used to say in france : "enleve la poutre que t'as dans l'oeil avant la paille de ton voisin"
In English:
"you should rather withdraw the beam of your eye than the straw of your neighbor one's "
so keep trolling, I give up.
Zehavoc
That's federal(or state or local), it's alittle annoying, but we can do it here(at least federal and some states).
register a child for a state school,
School Boards are run locally, so each has their own, not all that surprising considering the schools are at variable levels of technology
or be reminded that their regulatory car inspection is due in a month's time'
This is usually done on a state level.
So they cite three different activities and we as a nation handle them on three different governmental structure, we don't have the over arching Federal Govt that gets into local matters.(well within reason) So it's not surprising we don't have the same level here, even with greater population, we split the power up between the government levels.
Your English is fine. Your time would be better spent apologizing for bad voetball.
You can also pay your federal income taxes online and that's really the only time US citizens deal with the federal gov't (at least that's all I've ever done with the federal gov't). Maybe you need to open your eyes and ears a bit before asking why the US gov't isn't "online."
Winter 2010: With Glowing Hearts
Some of the things mentioned that this French government site can do are either things shared between the state and the feds, or just aren't mentioned in the Constitution and rest solely with the state. For example:
"pay taxes online"
If I recall correctly, you can pretty much do that already with your federal income taxes already through the IRS website, but it isn't the job of the IRS to collect state income taxes, or any other taxes levied by the state. Talk to your comptroller, or at the very least go to the website of your state government. For me, I'd have to find the Louisiana website for information on paying Louisiana income and property taxes.
"register a child for a state school"
Beyond those offered by the military for their dependants and the five federal academies, I don't think there is such a thing as a federal school. Elementary and high schools are usually the responsibility of the local government (county or city), while they only have to answer to state guidelines and standards. If you want to register your kid to attend local schools, talk to the local school board. They're at your county seat, not at Washington D.C.
"reminded that their regulatory car inspection is due in a month's time"
For commercial vehicles, while there are federal rules and regulations for your vehicle, it is up to the state to enforce them. As for personal vehicles, my title, registration and license plate are from the State of Louisiana, and the brake tag I got from St. Charles Parish. Frankly, I wouldn't want to have to deal with a city almost a thousand miles away for something as simple as my car. And if neither of those two governments provide what you're looking for, the only think you might be justified in complaining to the US Congress about is that they haven't set aside any money for state and local governments to set up such services.
So why can't we interact with the US federal government in the same way? At least 90% of the interactions your average citizen has with the federal government are with either the IRS or the USPS. Both of these organizations have very well-done, informative and useful websites. For anything else I suggest you check with your state website and/or see if your local government maintains a website.
I did read when the tax forms came online they didn't work properly - you could fill everything in online and submit it.
... no I won't say it but GUESSWHO)
But at the other end it was printed out and added to all the manual tax returns to be inputed by some data entry clerk.
One word - *doh*
I think it has been fixed now (just to be slashdotty I believe the system was developed by
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
I'm beginning to laugh seriously when i read all the "cocoricos" of french guys on that article.
French Republic is sick, very sick, and it needs urgently curing. Politicians are getting worse every day, and the state is growing larger every day as well, becoming a parasite.
And i won't forget that for version 2 of service-public.fr .
I don't want cosmetic changes, i want real changes. We won't get ones.
You know what is funny ? Maybe we can pay our taxes thru the website, but we won't be able to declare how much we earn (so that they can calculate the taxes). why ? simply because then we wouldn't need 10.000 bureaucrats to analyse what we declared and that they already know anyway (because it is mandatory for every company to declare how much we earn).
Don't get fooled by the governement. This is (almost) useless thing.
First, I can pay taxes online and register a child for a state school. I don't need to be reminded that their regulatory car inspection is due in a month's time since we don't do that here, but I can pay my car's taxes online.
According to the article, only about 20% of households have internet access. We're at, what?, about 60%. They need to place terminals in town halls. We already have them in virtually every public library.
We don't need to have a big government-pushed internet infrastructure because we already have a big internet infrastructure.
While I'm ranting, its all about the cost of local telephone calls. There are no free calls in Britain or France, so everyone pays by the minute for internet access. In the so-called free internet schemes that they do have, the calls are paid for by advertising.
There are alot of things I don't like here, but the USA has the best internet system in the world!
Don't want it.
I am involved now in a project that I think responds directly to the issue raised by the post.
The project is to create a portal to every company that contributed to financing the campaign of a representative.
The portal will centralize all information needed to ascertain that paid representatives are performing their fiduciary duties to the people who invested hard earned money in their campaigns.
The portal will have forms for donation as well as RFLs ( Request for Legislation ). And we are now devising a method to integrate issues of tax relief and lifting regulation. One idea is to have a law that correlates the amount of tax to the ammount of regulation. But this is all still on the drawing board.
The project is financed from a special tax deduction "for streamlining the interaction between business and government".
-- look, cheese ahoy!
I am in the Greek military right now. Do not worry we are working on fixing this, right now. One of these days the next Turkish F16 that flies over Cyprus or the Aegean will be shot done and we will launch a pre-emptive strike.
Our plan is as follows. The Turkish military expects a conflict on Cyprus or the Greek/Turkish border in Thrace. Since that is where they expect conflict our plan is to attack them from the north in blitzkrieg fashion, with most of the Greek army, the bases which they use to fight the PKK(Kurdish separtists). Most of our special forces already know Kurdish. They will attack from the south with the help of the PKK.
This attack will deveast most their forces in the southeastern Anatolia. Part of the Greek attacking army will break off and head to Turkish Cyprus and attack them from the east accompied by Cypriot forces who be transported in Greek amphibious ships. By this time the Greek navy, which has better fighting capability then their Turkish counterparts, will have blockaded Turkish Cyprus. The Turkish army on Cyprus has been preparing for a conflict on the Greek Cypriot side and will not be ready for this, they have most of their forces near the internationally protected common border.
After we are done with this part of the plan most of the Turkish army will be scrambling to reinforce the crushed division near what by now will be Kurdistan! That is when we plan to attack their forces on our Thracian border. The Kurds will use gorilla warfare and will attack the Turkish military as they always have, hitting and running, but this time with the support of 6 Greek divisions that will stay behind with them for the duration of the war on the Southeastern front.
We also are planning on conduction economic, cultural, pyschological warfare on Turkey shortly after we shoot down their fighter that will mark the start of this war. We expect that the Turkish military will not be able to adapt to fighting both a guerilla army and the regular Greek army. We are also working on creating our own indigenous guerilla forces, as we have studied the Turkish military's troubles with the PKK, and feel that hit and run tactics are effective against their forces.
We are working on trying to curry the favour of some of Turkey's neighbors and they are so many to choose from. Bulgaria, Armenia, Syria, Iraq and Iran all have little love for the Turkish government or should I say military (their government is run by the military).
Tell Russia to give us some of those wonderful SU-35(Sukhov) multi role fighters.
State government are getting into online services... in Maine, our "e-government" services go by the name "InforME", which is obviously a play on the word "inform" and the state initials. Sometimes, I wonder if they really meant "in for me".
The state has all kinds of cool services...usefull stuff, like being able to re-register my car online, and access to common forms.
What amazes me most about the whole idea of "e-government", is that somehow it gets done. State governments are bloated with red-tape, yet somehow they've managed to get an online system.
I don't expect the same from the federal goverment because they're too bloated to get out their own way. I'm amazed that the government doesn't colapse under its own weight. Perhaps this is one of the great wonders of the world.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
We're already there! A little late to the party (launched 09/00), but there none the less...
http://www.firstgov.gov/
To quote from the site: "the only official U.S. Government portal to 47 million pages of government information, services, and online transactions."
Quite a helpful site, really!
"All those with Psychokinesis, raise my hand." - The Doctor
http://www.centerdigitalgov.com/
http://www.state.ak.us/
Don't apologize... your English is much better than some of the native English speakers that I deal with daily.
Good work.
-Alex
I know exactly why the US system is like it is, and that is exactly the reason that this sort of thing is a problem, this isn't indicative of what is "good" or "bad" but of why somethings can be done in some places but not in others. The US for instance was a natural place for something like the internet as there is more of a culture of autonomous nodes.
Goverments where people were oppressed by distributed goverment : US during slavery, Italy, Germany etc etc etc. Its always possible no matter what the system as long as you convince the majority across the whole country.
The quote is from a US book "To kill a Mockingbird" the US was last successfully invaded IIRC in 1812. The UK in 1066, Iceland god knows when and Spain for about the same period as the US IIRC. The ability of an individual with a gun to stop an army isn't very great. Looks like most of Afghanistan had guns... didn't matter much as they were politically divided.
Social factors are the main governing factor in the success of most projects and operations. The hardware is for large parts of it irrelevant.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I dunno what everyone is expecting here... but there has been alot of on-line government resources for a long time now.
Consider: St. Paul.gov where you can view this week's prostitution arrests in the city of St. Paul.
What more do you REALLY want from your government than a good laugh?
Do you not own a watch? Here's the Time? Obviously your government is looking after you, considering your every possible need.
As far as I'm concerned these guys need to waste less money on this crap when there are former-tax-payers starving in the streets right now.
I don't really want people to perceive the government as "easy to use". I'd rather have people see it as it is, a burden. Similarly, I'd rather have income taxes not withheld from each paycheck so that people have to pay the IRS each month and realize where their 20,000 dollars a year goes. Then, perhaps, people will want to reduce their tax burden and save us from an ever expansive state.
Thinking about my pocketbook, would it raise or lower my taxes? This assumes, of course, that they adjusted tax rates to reflect the need for more or less funding for such a system? (I paid almost 50% of my income in taxes last year. Oh, and I only made 10,000. And people think the government gives businesses tax breaks.)
If you moved certain government services online, would it increase or decrease the government's budget requirements, assuming they didn't shift funding from anywhere besides the services that were moving to online-mostly?
I can tell you right now, if it makes bigger government, I'm not interested. Period.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
I suppose it could, but you'd probably run into length limitations:
"French Government Online - Why Isn't the U.S.? Is It Because They Suck? It's Because They Suck, Right?"
The fact of the matter is that Europeans always seem to get on these boards and bash Americans... constantly speaking of the ways that Americans think themselves superior. Wow. According to many American bashers, it appears to me that you think of us as the biggest bastards on the earth. What a sad statement.
You have to be pretty arrogant to assume that you understand what others think automatically.
I have a better answer to all of this... it would be best to ASK THEM WHAT THEY THINK.
You might be surprised that all Americans don't think ill at all of others or behave superior (after all this is America), and some actually respect and admire some European practices.
My only opinion about Europeans is that when reading text in their non-native languages is that they can't properly relate humor, which admittedly is a problem in all text. So let me say this:
Americans tease. They poke fun. The Brits get it because they are culturally close to us. Poking fun at (and especially humbling) are our ways. From the outside it no doubt looks like direct insult. I don't think that I have ever laughed at other cultures jokes. Its hard to get what they mean. It is even harder to grasp a foreigners sense of humor. Anglos, like Native Americans, tease mercilessly. Its just bound to piss you off if you realize that they are smiling behind that.
So if you're French... keep Jerry Lewis.
And if you're German... keep the tiny pistol away from me.
And for God's sake, keep smiling, this thread started by taking about the internet and government work.
I thought Microsoft powered our (uk) govenrment portal (i've never used it, and using opera i probably never will) if they are, then the US is better off without, otherwise, after fighting to give women the vote, we will also have to fight to give opera and lynx the vote LOL. Anyway, the only reason we have it is 'cause Blairs all for that new-fangled witchery stuff, and the only reason the french get it, is because the english have it :)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Similar experience when I had to renew my car registration: I went to a state Web site, typed in my VIN, and it said hey, you need a smog check before we can renew your registration. I got one, drove back home, went back to the Web site, and it already knew I had passed not 15 minutes ago. Typed in my credit card number and the new tags were in my mailbox within a week.
Also, you have been able to pay U.S. income taxes electronically for years now. I'm not sure quite what's new about this French thing, except that perhaps it's broader and being done on a bigger scale than in the U.S., whose federal structure is supposed to mean more things get done at a state level.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Part of the problem is that the US (Federal) Government does not have an all-inclusive internet plan. Not all of the websites look or work the same. They are not laid out the same. They do not all use the same hardware or software. Neither should they be: the SEC has *far* different operating requirements than the CIA, NSA or FBI. Also, as has been mentioned, most of the 'US government' (i.e. all governments, not just federal) is NOT the Federal government, but state and local governments.
The Daily Build
not mean it is desireable or even safe. Given the US governments love affair with M$, you KNOW they would put all the information in an IIS setup that would get hacked daily. I'd just as soon wait a while longer for this....
The French are not more online. My girlfriend just went through hell trying to pay her French taxes "online" and the French government did a fine job of "losing" her payment, forcing her to send a paper payment later causing them to label her account as "delinquent".
As a matter of fact, we spent the first part of this year trying to get the right tax forms from the French government. We looked online and they only had forms that were two years old online. The site hadn't been updated since 1999. That doesn't seem more online to me. (Hell, they're barely offline, either -- the local office didn't have the damn forms either.)
In the US, we can go online and get all sorts of information -- including the proper tax forms for the year. Sure, it's not all nicely packaged in one happy Big Brother box, but it's there. Heck, even the INS has its forms online.
So, don't go touting the French thing as some amazing online revolution, because it's sure not to live up to all the promises.
1) US has branded online gamblers as terrorists
2) All dealings with the IRS are a huge gamble
Hence, paying your taxes online would be considered gambling, and we all know how the US doesnt like to contradict itself.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
People are missing the fact that attitudes towards government are fundamentally different between the U.S. and Europe (much of the rest o the world for that matter). Bottom line: Other advanced countries in the world believe in public infrastructure (which includes government)-- Americans don't. That means for us in the U.S.:
- we will never have a working passenger rail system (don't talk to me about amtrak)
- Park benches will be designed for maximum discomfort, in order to deter people from sitting on them.
- our streets will always be littered by trash, since no one believes in the public commons.
- our schools will be worthy of the third world (and in some cases they will have to stretch even to achieve that)
- Government will strive to do as little as possible. That means no well functioning web sites. If the U.S. builds a site similar to the one mentioned, it will be designed for failure from the get go. That's because it will be contracted to several different private companies, who will all strive to politically one-up their competitors and all strive to rape the government. Since the government doesn't attract able administrators lack of any intelligent oversight will ensure this happens.
I don't know of anything as extensive as the French or UK site sounds, but our government does offer HiCitizen.com, which makes it easier to find the information you're looking for on government web sites.
Simple answer: the American government is infested with capitalists who think they can exploit every situation for profit. With all these wolves in the henhouse, it's no surprise nothing ever gets done: they're too busy feasting on what's available already.
Why not the US? Because you cannot declare WAR on the fact that there is no e-government.
That's how you solve problems in the good ol' U.S. of A.: war.
War on drugs
War on povrety
War on terrorism
War war war war war
The broader question is: Why do so many people judge the accomplishments of a country by the those of it's government?
Online. I hate using pens, I use my PC for everything, especially job hunting. Why isn't my unemployment direct depositable? (It would save me bank fee's from not having direct deposit) It would save me postage mailing off those forms every week, and it would just be copy and paste into the fields about what jobs I have looked for.
Wrong.
(Fuck you lame ass filter. If you REALLY worked, the above post wouldn't have been made!)
Well heck, the Vatican is probably one of the most wired states in the world -- they have a website.
There's the problem with percentages...
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
http://www.firstgov.gov actually has quite a bit of info and links.
"The right to do something does not mean doing it is right." William Safire
Of interest:e m47.html#1
- http://www.institut.qc.ca/veille_ice/novembre01/s
(in french)
Notepad specialist & FAT administrator, group training available
Gee, this sounds like Open Source Software development process.
"My apologies for my bad english, I'm Dutch. "
I'm English. I cannot even speak Dutch.
:)
Why did it take so long for France to join the US?
:-)
The Federal, State, and many local governments have been online for quite a while.
Check this http://www.hawaii.gov (it also looks nice and is a great place for vacations and living
Nice...but the problem is quality british humor is like saying "meat loving vegetarian" it's an oxymoron.
Not only can the british not speak, they cannot spell, nor can they deliver decent HUMOUR or as we say humor.
What will happen when the french government is overturned again like it is every 10 or so years.....
When the amount of work required to fill out and submit forms to the government is reduced, they will just add more forms. Yippie I get to use Acrobat to fill in my IRS forms, and each year they change the tax code and add new forms. Enough money and time are already wasted complying with government regulations and taxes.
All e-government will do is allow the bureacrats (who increase in number every year) to come up with new forms for the taxpayers to fill out. The real problem in the US is too much government, not paper forms.
It would be fairly ironic if I got flamed for this :)
In the US, most of the real action happens on the city, county and state levels. So the problem becomes one of ability and funding. For example, I live in Boise, Idaho, a reasonably tech-savvy oasis in the Intermountain West, and while I think that the local governments would love to have more of an Internet presence than they do, they also have to deal with the fact that there are other projects to fund.
The Internet is cool and a lot of people use it, but on the local level dollars are hard to come by and most local governments are going to look a lot harder at repairing the roads and fixing the school's roof than they are at enabling online payment of property taxes.
The Internet isn't as ubiquitous as many of us think, and until it is, I don't think that we'll see it used with the sort of universality that the telephone or the Postal Service is used.
But I'm sure it'll happen someday...
-h-
I ran into a humorous little on-line government catch-22 the other day.
I was applying for one of those "we need geeks" government cries for technical patroits that the press is saying there is always a need for... as you may or may not know, job hunting for government postitions is quite a daunting task... all the paperwork has to be *perfect* before the low-level paper shufflers will even *think* about forwarding your packages to the second level bureaucrat in charge of rejections. Anyway, as luck would have it I was missing something (although for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what was missing from my 50 page application... no really... between the resume, dd214, SF306, SF171, self nomination, hs/college transcripts, cert comms, metorious promotion, letter of commendation, NAM award, skills narrative(s), self assesment for federal employability, and various industry certifications/random government paperwork the package came to 50 pages).
Anway the first level cog in the multi-teired wheel of government job application reviewers point me to a web site that had a job kit with all the paperwork I could ever hope to fill out.
Oddly, the site was down... for a week...
So, I bitched and monaned to every congress criter/sentor thingie and generally BCC'ed all the reporters and complete melovelent basterds I knew. The site was back up within 3 days (pretty good for government work). I filled out the appropriate paperwork and submitted it without a word from the first level cog.
...about a month later, I get a little post card in the mail telling me that my application was rejected because I was missing some bit of paperwork that *wasn't* included in the job kit.
I've since given up any hope of ever working for the government for a sub-standard industry salary. Is there *really* any question why the government is incapapble of accomplishing even the simplist tasks with even a modest amount of efficency?
Who wants to be a french citizen raise there hand, then wait for a published expolit on their technology.
I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
Contrary to what many posts on this board say it is not because the population of the US is 4 or 5 times that of Britain or France. If you can build a database to handle 60 million records you can easily extend it for 280 million, it's when it starts incresing by multiple oders of magnitude (6 billion etc.) that you get into trouble.
The reason probably is because the USA is much more decentralised than France or Britian and therefore it is more likely that you'll get this thing happening at the state level. This also happens here in Australia to some extent (things get done at the state level) - although it doesn't make sense for such a small nation. I think there is a trend in Aust. to federalise things a bit more (eg the new Australia wide parking rules replacing state specific ones). And centralisation doesnt have to mean less efficiency - the USA's decentralised system of 1001 local beuracracies (not sure about the spelling) is probably less efficient than a more centralised system, to an extent.
In my home state of Virginia, for example, we can access a number of state services online, including almost all DMV services. This has been around for several years. And, like in France, a lot more will be in place by 2005.
If you are really interested in seeing the government online, the Legislative Information System in Virginia will let you track movement of bills between chambers of the General Assembly and in and out of committees and subcommittees, view sponsors and amendments, let you know the outcome of votes after each stage, and tell you whether the Governor approved or vetoed the measure. The data go back to 1994.
Singapore also had an online government. How come it is not mentioned?
Visit the link below for the services offered to the citizen by Singapore eGovernment.
http://www.ecitizen.gov.sg/
Visit the link below for the plan for Singapore eGovernment.
http://www.egov.gov.sg/
There are those of us who take comfort in knowing that our government doesn't have a single place to go for every tidbit of information on its citizens. Sure, we mihgt be only a few steps away from that today, but remeber government isn't a being; it is people. Likewise, trust the people of the government with the nature you would trust the clerk at a hotel front desk. You expect him to do his job, but would you really be surprised if he swiped that $5 you left on the counter?
here it makes sense, there are zones with more than 10 million people.
The Brazilian population is about half that of the US, which means "same order of magnitude". The amount of bureaucracy is debatable, our income tax is MUCH simpler, but we beat you in several other points.
I have filled my income tax returns on-line in the last four years now. This year I did all the paperwork on renovating my drivers license on-line (www.detran.rj.gov.br, asp and flash, the whole shit!), although I had to go to a flesh-and-bones doctor (randomly chosen by computer) for the examination. We have had nationwide elections using digital ballots since 1998. As a matter of fact, in 1998 I was randomly chosen as an inspector for the presidential elections, so I have a somewhat more deep knowledge than I would like of that system.
Have instant internet votes on all issues. Design a secure voting network- it will be as trustworthy as the pen and paper network we have today (probably more so- no more floridas). Eliminate the need for an elite ruling class.
w00t
In the distance you hear an ominous moo.
States' Rights was pretty much dissolved by the Civil War, and only lately have there been good arguments for it, such as Oregon and their fight for the right to administer euthanasia.
Please read this article and examine your assumptions.
In the UK, we're still catching up with the US!
Foreigner's can be held with secret evidence:
Washington Report
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Burning books & destroying CD's.
Libraries destroying information
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The FBI can tap your communications without a warrant(carnivore). See the ATA for other violations of the constitution.
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Dimitri? Held for how long for allowing Russians to exercise their fair use rights. Suppose Iran would arrest an american for creating a porn-program and posting it on the Internet (forcing their laws on you). Would you be angry?
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DMCA. Take away your fair use rights, who wants to view DVD's on linux anyway? Copy media for your own use, thou shall not. 'Quoting' something (for a review or such), not allowed. Viewing an e-book in a non-approved browser: no, the traditional reverse engineering for interoperability is forbidden. Who needs competition anyway?
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Mandatory censorship in libraries. Who needs freedom of speech? A good thing your daughter can't find info on birth control, the US would risk losing it's nr. 1 position in teenage pregnancies.
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Randal Schwartz? A security advisor at Intel who forgot to inform his boss of running a password-auditing program. Even without hostile intent he was convicted. The same law can get you 15 years in Oregon if you run Napster on your computer or change the color of your screen without informing your boss (the judge gave that last example, I didn't make it up). They don't have to tell you it's wrong in advance.
Oregon vs our favorite Perl programmer
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'But, but...other countries are far worse'
That's what I expect someone to say now.
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
Let me introduce myself : my name is Godefroy Beauvallet and I am advisor for IT to Michel Sapin, who is the minister in charge of public service and eGovernment in France. More about him and the ministry here.
The BBC article is based on Governmental decisions taken on November, 15th here in France. I actually am one of the guys who briefed the BBC journalist on that one.
Branded "eGovernment : Second Stage", these decisions aim at generalising online services in the public sector before 2005.
To know more about the second stage, you can go here. To know more about the first stage, there is a page in English here.
It's of course difficult (and is it really interesting, anyway) to try and find out which government is the most advanced as far as eGov is concerned : what we all know (and we discuss that at EU level and with US, Canada and many others) is we all are still at the begining of the journey.
A few French highlights : the equivalent of FistGov is Service-public.fr. We believe it is a good informative portal, with about 100 online services, 1100 online static forms, access (index and search engine) to 6500 public websites, a "user manual" of 2500 pages and 1600 Q&A on about anything you want to do with the government (both local and national). Another site publishes everyday (and someone who said the opposite on the list is wrong) all laws and decrees taken by the Governement. Among services provided online are tax filings and payments (individual and firms), scholarships to students, access to public service jobs (through competitive examps) and many others.
We also try and do a lot of things to enhance interoperability among our information systems. We believe this is crucial, as we do not want to be mono-supplier of IT (for legal as well as strategic reasons). That lead us to rising interest in open-source software, and the Government Agency in charge of IT publish a lot of information on them here. Michel SAPIN also publicly endorsed the open-source movement in several occasions.
And to end this rather long post, I want to stress out that French citizens are very hot on privacy and personal data handling. Since 1978, there is an independant public body in charge of these questions here : the CNIL. Any database a ministry creates needs to be approved by the CNIL before it is put online, and there are many an example where a project was stopped by the CNIL on privacy concerns. We want to think carefully about these issues before we go on with a technical widget or another : the PM decided on November, 15th that three "wise guys" are to think about it : the former president of the Cour de Cassation (more or less the equivalent to the Supreme court), a high-ranking civil servant and a well-known sociologist. First report due on January 2002.
I could not explain a whole policy in this post. I would be pleased to try and answer more specific questions in the thread of by email.
Best regards !
Hello!!! I KISS YOU!!!!
You Turks need some bloody English lessons.
This is nonsense.
I am French and living in France and can tell you that the French are lagging WAY behind all the "modern" countries such as the US, UK or Germany. Statistics show that the number of french families connected to the Internet is not even 20%. Compare that to the near 50% US rate.
The French are old-minded people, and do not embrace new technology very fast, as said in a previous post on this page. They invented the minitel, great! but now what are they doing? sticking with that old dumb terminal from the early 1980's, instead of massively adhering to the Internet.
This is considered as a major issue right now in France, and the government has only consented to undertake a few symbolic actions against it. Go on that so-called online tax-paying site and tell me if you can actually pay your taxes... i doubt it.
-- "Big Brother is watching you!"