The European Commission has asked for bids from organisations to
carry out a Web-based survey on electronic government services.
Its aim is to benchmark member states' e-government activities by
measuring which of the basic public services are online and their
levels of sophistication.
In a separate research project the commission has appealed for IT
research teams to become involved in a project to identify common
content characteristics of the most internationally popular
European Union-designed Web sites.
Its directorate general for Information Society said it wanted to
"benchmark availability and usage of European digital content,"
focusing on sites receiving the most hits in EU member states plus
Norway, Iceland and the US.
The commission aims to identify and characterise the most visited
and most popular content. Brussels thinks that by exploiting the
cultural diversity of the EU, Web site designers can build a
stronger market presence.
Keith Nuthall