Power without guns? The withering away of the state?
Extract from article in the Economist below
Chris Burford
London
SURVEY GOVERNMENT AND THE INTERNET
IN DOWNTOWN Phoenix, Arizona, people are queuing
in a grubby municipal office to renew their car and truck
registrations. They are visibly bored and frustrated, but
what can they do? All over the world, people dealing with
government departments and agencies are having to engage
in dreary and time-consuming activities they would much
rather avoid.
What is unusual about Arizona is that the locals have a
choice. Since 1996, a pioneering project called
ServiceArizona has allowed them to carry out a growing
range of transactions on the web, from ordering
personalised number plates to replacing lost ID cards.
Instead of having to stand in a queue at the motor vehicle
department, they can go online and renew their registrations
24 hours a day, seven days a week, in a transaction that
takes an average of two minutes.
What is more, ServiceArizona has not cost taxpayers a
cent to set up, and is free to users. The website was built
and is maintained and hosted by IBM, which is being paid
2% of the value of each transaction—about $4 for each
vehicle registration. But because processing an online
request costs only $1.60, compared with $6.60 for a
counter transaction, the state also saves money. With 15%
of renewals now being processed by ServiceArizona, the
motor vehicle department saves around $1.7m a year.
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