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The Public Sphere Information Group (PSI Group) has conducted a broad study of electronic government implementation across the municipalities in the Greater Boston, Massachusetts area. The study, part of the overall Municipality eGovernment Assessment Project (MeGAP) designed and conducted by the PSI Group, assesses the degree of implementation of services by cities across 55 different functions and services typically provided by municipalities. (> view entire report)
The 129 cities across 8 different counties (and two states) in the survey were selected by virtue of their being included by the US Census as the municipalities constituting the Boston Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area (PMSA).
The overall finding of the study is two-fold:
- Some of the most sophisticated municipal websites in the nation are in the Boston PMSA
- There is a huge disparity across municipalities in terms of the quality of online services
Of cities with populations under 15,000, fully 40% are without official websites. One aspect of the digital divide that should be taken up by policymakers is the differential capacity of municipalities to provide their citizens with online services. Put differently, of the 3,406,829 residents of the Boston PMSA, 655,739 (~19.2%) live in municipalities without websites.
The Best of Boston
Using the MeGAP, the egovernment implementation across municipalities was summarized as an "escore," allowing a ranking of the best websites in the Boston Area.
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