Ethics in E-Government

E-Government being a 21st century movement is very new and constantly changing so it is only right there is a set standard of ethics involved with it as it moves forward. How does one go about creating a framework of what an ethical system looks like and what it will contain? Looking at America as a whole you can make a fair assumption that the large majority of the population is digitally connected and there is an effort made to provide internet access to a large portion of the population. If you were to compare America's ease of internet access to other less developed nations the disparity would shock you.

North Americas population has the highest access to internet while the world average is 49.7 percent. This brings up the point of does one nation having ample internet access while other countries do not create a type of "digital divide" when one country or continent has resources that others severely lack? Is the internet a "right" that should be provided to everyone? The internet costs money to set up and maintain where will this money come from? I do not have the correct answers to these questions because they are very open ended but I firmly believe that technology is the path to the future and when there is entire nations with no access to internet than they will continue to be behind the times and make it very hard to compete with other nations. America has done a very well job of providing access to the public whether that is through private organizations offering it at their places of business for example McDonald's, or Starbucks. Even in public places such as libraries their is access to information out there far more than other nations.

As for a bigger picture on developing a moral compass in terms of e-government going forward how would such a thing even look like? Presenting facts and showing the citizens what is right or wrong and having a baseline of data to back it up is a step. Especially in the justice system you see far too often certain people getting a lighter sentence than other people and with data being so readily available this needs to be brought to light if as a nation we would like to come together instead of dividing as it currently stands. E-government's main focus is to make things easier on its citizens and is truly the future of democracy bringing together the people and the elected officials as we move into a system where you cannot hide behind unethical actions any longer. Policies need to be set in place to give a set answer on what is and what is not acceptable to do with data collected legally. Should our data be publicly available to public agencies in order to help keep the nation safe from terror or other evil? These are all tough questions that are being asked right now and it is happening everyday so you must be careful on what you choose to "share" on the internet because once you hit send, submit, post, or tweet it becomes a part of the internet and can come back to haunt you.