United Nations E-Government Survey: challenges and opportunities in the assessment of local digital government initiatives

E-government development is high on political agendas, but the emphasis has mainly been on national priorities and progress, with the assessment of local e-government maturity remaining in the early stages and relatively rare. Considering cities are essentially a collection of human, social, economic and cultural networks and in which the public processes that support social cohesiveness and development can be optimized and made more efficient and efficacious, increased attention should be given to assessing the online presence of local government in cities—a fundamental aspect of e-government. Towards this end, UN DESA and UNU-EGOV established the Local Online Service Index (LOSI) in assessing cities’ role as service providers and examining city portals as the key mechanism for e-government in such contexts. To be more specific, LOSI captures e-government development at the local level, by assessing information and services provided by cities through official websites. It started as a pilot study in 2018 assessing portals in 40 cities across different regions of the world to include the biggest city in all 193 Member States.

Objectives for the participants

• Obtain an overall picture of the current status of cities' online presence worldwide, while participants are highly encouraged to help perfect the LOSI methodology;
• Learn the difference between national digital government assessment and local level e-government evaluation;
• Explore the current level of maturity of cities' online portals in terms of technological features, content and services provision, institutional framework, and mechanisms for participation and engagement;
• Acquire the knowledge and toolsets essential in promoting local e-government through other countries’ successful practices, to present/discuss the LOSI Pilots and the learnings from them;
• Gain an understanding about potential challenges that local authorities face to improve their e-government performance;
• Discuss future of digital government at local level and identify a new set of assessment indicators for LOSI that will make LOSI more aligned with future trends.