Look it up on the web 网上寻觅
Feb 14th 2008
From The Economist print edition
The growth of i-government 政府网站的增长
Illustration by Allan Sanders
EVEN the most curmudgeonly critic would have to admit the one great benefit of e-government: it comes twinned with i-government, where i stands for information. As readers under the age of 30 may be only dimly aware, before the internet age simply getting hold of information on any aspect of government was often far from straightforward. Getting the right form and finding out how to fill it in might involve going to a post office, writing a letter (sometimes enclosing a money order or a stamped self-addressed envelope) or visiting a government office and often queuing. Government printing offices sold official documents to cover their costs and sometimes to make a profit.
甚至最小气的批评家都不得不承认电子政府的一个巨大好处：它伴随着信息政府。三十岁以下的读者们可能印象已经黯淡了，在网络时代之前想得到政府的一点点的信息，往往不是那么简单。得到正确的表格并了解如何填写也许需要去到邮局，写一封信（有时还需要装入一份现金订单或附有邮资的回信信封）或者要到政府办公室并且要经常排队。政府印刷所售卖办公文件以弥补指出，有时候还能额外挣一点。
All this meant that information came at a price in time, effort and fees. In poorer countries it might require more than that. The forms might not be available, or they might have to be bought from profiteering officials or their friends. The layout would change regularly, so that applicants with the wrong form could be fined or encouraged to pay a bribe to have their mistake overlooked. Being in charge of publishing the latest regulations used to be a lucrative niche: a business would pay handsomely for information about a new standard that its products had to comply with.
这些意味着，要获得信息，就要付出时间、体力和金钱的代价。在穷国，也许需要更多。表格甚至是不可拿到的，或者可能必须从牟利的官员或者官员的朋友那里购买。规划也时常变动，因此，填错表格的申请者可能受到罚款或者被暗示交一笔贿赂来使得官员们忽视他们的错误。负责发布最新版本规章的人常处于有利境地：商人需要花费一大笔钱来获得新标准方面的信息，而他们的产品需要遵守这些标准。
These days, governments in advanced countries put virtually all documents intended for public consumption online. That gives the citizen-consumer everything he might want, along with much that he probably doesn't. Even e-backwaters such as Turkmenistan or Myanmar provide things like visa application forms on the web, although in other respects they may be invisible online.
现在，发达国家的政府事实上已经将所有的文件在线提供给公众使用。他们像公民提供所有需要的东西，同时也有很多不需要的。甚至电子时代的死角例如土库曼斯坦或者缅甸也在网上提供类似签证申请表之类的东西，尽管其他人认为他们不可能在网上显示。
It goes without saying that simply providing information is no guarantee of good government (being able to download a form does not mean that the embassy will be efficient, let alone that the applicant will get a visa). All the same, it marks a huge change. Just as scarcity favours corruption, knowledge brings power. Making the right forms freely available is only part of it. More broadly, putting laws, regulations, parliamentary debates and the details of state budgets online makes maladministration harder. Those outside government can ask sharper questions about its decisions and be more confident about making their own. Those inside government have less excuse for misrule.
不用说，简单提供信息并不能证明是好政府（可下载表格并不意味着大使馆会提高效率，不意味着申请者将能拿到签证）。同样的，它带来了巨大的改变。就像没人喜欢的腐败现象，知识带来力量。免费正确填写表格仅仅是一部分。更广泛的，在线公布法律、规章、议会辩论记录和政府预算的细节使得施行暴政更加困难。那些政府外的人士可以问询更加尖锐的问题。政府也有了更少的接口来解释其管理失当。
The flagship project of this kind is America's usa.gov, a multiple award-winner and probably the best single e-government website in the world. It sticks chiefly to providing information. Although it also offers 100-plus online services, these turn out mostly to be links to other sites where you can renew a passport, contact an elected official or download a Polish-language visa application form. It is complemented by a family of other sites, such as benefits.gov, which offers information about every part of the largesse that the taxpayer directs to the needy.
类似的旗舰计划便是美国的usa.gov，作为众多奖项的获得者并且可能是世界上最好的单个电子政府网站。它主要依靠提供信息来吸引用户。尽管它可以提供超过100项的在线服务，这些通常会是链接到别的网站，可以续签护照，联系选择的官员或者下载一份波兰语的签证申请表。它是由一系列网站组成的，例如benefits.gov，它可以提供关于纳税人向穷人的慷慨付出的信息。
My country, right or wrong
Yet even in this relatively straightforward task of making public information properly public, technology offers plenty of scope for blunder. In its most recent annual report on the world's government websites, America's Brown University catalogued an array of mishaps found last year. For example, the website of Chad's embassy in Washington, DC, had been taken over by a cheeky business, as had that of Libya's mission to the UN and Timor-Leste's ministry of justice. In Nepal, the ministry of industry and commerce, mentioned on the main government site, had no active links. The latest “news” story on the site of Laos's embassy in Washington, DC, dated from 2006. Tonga's national portal offered links such as “about us” and “quick facts” that did not work. Mexico's site for “agriculture/hunting/fishing/rural development” provided links to an “English” option that led nowhere. And some sites carried advertising suggesting a surprising degree of official entrepreneurship: Bolivia's portal, for instance, had a banner ad for passion.com, which promised “sexy personals for passionate singles”.
现在，在相对简单的任务例如公共信息完全公开，技术也提供了大量的机会来犯错。在最近一期的世界政府网站年度报告里，美国布朗大学统计发布了一批去年发现的错误。例如，乍得驻华盛顿大使馆的网站已经被厚颜无耻的商业所接管，正如利比亚驻联合国使团和东帝汶司法部那样。在尼泊尔，其中央政府网站上提及的工商部的链接是无效的。老挝驻华盛顿使馆的最新的“新闻”已经是2006年的了。汤加的国家门户提供的链接例如“关于我们”和“实时真相”并不工作。墨西哥“农林牧渔”网站的英语版本链接根本打不开。一些网站有着令人惊讶的官办企业身份的广告：例如玻利维亚门户，有一个passion.com的广告条，承诺“为激情单身准备的性感身体”。
Even if government websites are not actually wrong or dysfunctional, they are seldom designed with the outsider in mind. For a start, they are often far too numerous and poorly linked. In Britain, Alex Butler, an e-government chief, has closed 551 of the 951 central-government websites that existed in early 2006. No new ones are permitted. The aim is to shift content onto directgov, the British government's central information point, and to a sister site offering online public services to business.
甚至当政府网站并没有错或者功能混乱的时候，他们也很少像外面的网站一样精心设计过。作为开始，他们远谈不上数量众多，并且很少有人链接他们。在英国，一位电子政府主管Alex Butler，已经关闭了06年早期存在的951家中央政府网站中的551家，并且没有允许建设新的网站。目标便是将内容转移到directgov，英国政府的中央信息点，另外还会有一个姐妹站点为商业提供在线公共服务。
But directgov has its critics too. William Heath, who runs a witty blog on government reform, idealgovernment.com, describes the website as a “random generator of self-referential public-service information”. That may be a bit unfair. Directgov's managers agree that the site's search engine needs improving, but argue that its main role is to package information into useful clusters: “coherent citizen-focused topics”, in e-government-speak.
但是directgov也有批评者。William Heath，一位关于政府改革的博客的博主，描述政府网站“随意制造自我互相参考公共服务信息”。这也许有些不够公平，Directgov的管理者们承认网站的搜索引擎需要改进，但是争论其主要角色是将信息打包成为有用的序列：“要将公民关注的话题放在一起”，电子政府的发言中说。
Yet government websites rarely fit the way that people actually use the internet. A Google search for “UK” “government” “childhood” “obesity” and “help” brings up a site that links to some mildly interesting statistics, but the excellent “children and healthy weight” page on directgov does not come up among the first 100 results. France, which prefers the term “transformation” to “e-government”, has put impressive swathes of government information onto a well-presented and well-designed website.
现在，政府网站很少符合人们实际使用网络的习惯。在google中搜索英国、政府、童年、肥胖和帮助会出现一个页面链接到一些有趣的统计结果，但是想要的directgov上的“儿童和健康体重”页面并没有在前一百个结果出现。更愿意用“改革”来形容电子政府的法国，已经将令人印象深刻的一系列政府信息发布到了一个外观精美设计良好的网站上。
Companies have mostly understood that visitors to their sites do not necessarily come through the front door. Their websites cater for the fact that consumers often start internet shopping by searching for a particular product or going to a price-comparison site. Governments, by contrast, do not “optimise” their websites to make them easily readable by outside search engines; indeed some actively discourage the idea—for example, by making information available only to registered users.
公司们大都懂得他们网站的访问者不必非要经过网站的首页。他们的网站迎合消费者们的习惯，他们经常开始网络购物通过搜索具体产品或者去比价网站。与之相对应的政府网站并没有对其网站进行最优设计以便于外部的搜索引擎搜录，实际上，一些地方却直接阻止这样（被搜索引擎搜录），例如仅仅对注册用户显示信息。
So even the apparently simple task of publishing well-presented and logically arranged information on the web turns out to be surprisingly difficult—and remains incomplete. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has defined four stages of e-government, each more demanding than the last. After information comes “interaction”, then “transaction” and eventually “transformation” (see chart 1). The more transformational the change, the bigger the benefits. But it turns out that, at all stages, the biggest beneficiaries will be governments, so they may have to work at persuading users to accept the changes.
将外观精美排列符合逻辑的信息发布在网上，仅仅是这样显而易见的简单工作，却困难的让人吃惊，并且还是不完善的工作。经合组织已经将电子政府定义了四个阶段，一级比一级严苛。在信息公开之后，是“交流互动”，然后便是“处理事务”，并最终实现“政务革命”。变革的越多，好处便越大。但是它所有的四个等级产生的最大受益人就是政府自身，所以他们也许必须得开始劝服用户们接受改变。 |
