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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?"
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
What is firstgov.com?
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
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.
>And France has nothing like states' rights that the US has to cope with that makes us a patchwork of sometimes conflicting laws.
Actually, we have. Corsica and Alsace (trn ?), (and some other regions i think) more or less have special laws/regulations on many aspects covered by that portal. So i really wonder how it will work. Especially, each French city/county/region has its own taxes (we are professionals at taxing), so i wonder how it will work in that big portal....
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.
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.
It's a ptetty big initiative, but they are making a lot of progress. It's looking like every taxpayer is going to have a government issue PKI key.
When someone yells "Stop" or goes limp, or taps out, the fight is over.
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!!
Excuse me, but privacy laws in europe are stronger than in the US. Ask Microsoft or any other big american companies about that.
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
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.
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.
You mean SIPRNET, NIPRNET, and INTELNET ?
They've had these for a while.
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
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.
"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."
You seem to have neglected something here, though. I don't live in the United State of America. While in France the question of working for the state may be binary, potential government employes have to ask themselves whether they want to work for their state or federal government. And they are both mutually exclusive.
"They're catholics"
And we're not? This particular argument only holds true if any enclaves of American Catholics are weak and dispersed at best. However, I was born and raised in Maryland (a state founded by Catholics and still has a strong Catholic history... Note that the state flag isn't properly flown without a stylized cross atop the flagpole) and I currently live in Louisiana (another state with a strong Catholic history due to their French history), yet neither of these states have become a France in miniature, before or after embracing their Constitution-mandated republican governments. As for the embrace of technology of these two states, they couldn't be more different despite their shared religious history.
At any rate, it's interesting to note that while us mere English-speaking nations have an innate distrust of state, the French seem to have ended up with an innate distrust of religion. I'm curious now about which one is "more better."
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/
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.