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Summary of Wave Two MeGAP Results

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The Public Sphere Information Group (PSI Group) has conducted a broad study of electronic government implementation among the largest cities in the United States. The study of cities with populations between 100,000 and 200,000, 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.

WAVE 2 of the national MeGAP is now nearing completion. The PSI Group has released results for U.S. cities over 500,000 (August 2002), for U.S. cities between 200,000 and 500,000 (October 2002), for U.S. cities between 150,000 and 200,000 (November 2002), and for U.S. cities between 100,000 and 150,000. At the same time, the PSI Group is also conducting targeted assessments of three U.S. metropolitan regions (see other news articles).

Key findings of the study:

1. An astounding amount of progress has been made by U.S. cities and towns:
   • At Wave I (2000-2001), only 36 of the 141 cities with populations between 100,000 and 200,000 had much more than a bare minimal web presence. Today, only one city in the study lacks an official website.
   • Of the cities in Wave I, the mean eScore was 41.2. In Wave II, that has improved to 67.
   • The mean percentage improvement for all cities was 178%; over half of the cities improved by 87% or more.
   • The most impressive improvements have been made by smaller areas. Average improvement (not counting small cities not included in Wave I):
     • Larger cities (over 500K): 109%
     • Mid-sized cities (200-500K): 170%
     • Smaller cities (100-200K): 258%
2. Beyond simply establishing an online presence, the number of cities offering interactive access to municipal functions has increased and, encouragingly, the trend has been for increasing numbers of smaller cities to make these changes. A sample of improvements:
 

Feature	# of cities with Feature		Improvement
	WAVE I	WAVE II
Downloadable Forms	73	207	35%
Job Applications	67	173	39%
City Code	70	164	43%
Building Permit Process	51	163	31%
Budget Report	58	129	45%
Bids On-line	48	129	37%
Document Management	31	125	25%
Minutes of Meetings	46	101	46%
Online GIS	35	76	46%

The Top Fifty:

• Request the complete report on the MeGAP at Wave II
• View the complete summary results from the MeGAP Wave II by eScore or in alphabetical order or by population
• View MeGAP Wave II Best Practices table
• Take a look at MeGAP assessment of entire U.S. metropolitan regions (no link yet-should be to Regional Study main page)
• View MeGAP Wave I Data (2001)
• What's the MeGAP?
• Interested in how your region stacks up? Contact the PSI Group.