Accenture has released its 2002 eGovernment Leadership – Realizing the Vision report, where they look at 23 countries’ work on eGovernment and their “maturity” (in termsn of Service Maturity and Customer Relationship Management). Denmark recorded strong results and was ranked 5th on Overall Maturity, one of the Visionary Challengers. In the Innovative Leaders category are Canada, Singapore and USA, the usual suspects.
Accenture found that “governments are, albeit slowly, realizing their visions. More importantly, there is a growing recognition that eGovernment is not just about technology – but about harnessing technology as just one of the tools to transform the way governments operate. Governments are learning that transformation comes not from moving services online, but from redesigning the organization and processes to put the citizen at the center, integrating across agencies to simplify interaction, reduce cost and improve service. Transformation is only possible with the right governance structure, together with the political will to drive change across the whole of government. I agree.
They also write: In 2002, several interesting patterns are emerging in eGovernment. The distance between the leaders and the followers is widening. There is a late mover advantage emerging however, as a number of countries that were late starters make exponential strides and become serious challengers. Governments that adopt Customer Relationship Management principles early in their eGovernment initiatives are improving at a much faster pace. (my emphasis)
Guess what Accenture sells … CRM-solutions.
A word of caution: the Danish case is filled with dysinformation, and really ought to be revised, so that at least the most obvious errors and misunderstandings are cleared out. Without saying too much, I think Accenture should have done a more thorough investigation and perhaps interviewed a few more actors to get the full picture.
And, by the way, the cited vision was the previous government’s, and things have changed since then …
