Does E-Government Measure Up to E-Business? Comparing End User Perceptions of U.S. Federal Government and E-Business Web Sites

This paper examines the federal government's success in implementing and providing high-quality service through e-government, something that has received very little attention. We define quality from the perspective of the end users of federal agency Web sites, as measured through customer survey data. Using data from the American Customer Satisfaction Index, we compare the performance of federal agency Web sites across a range of relevant variables with a private sector equivalent, e-business Web sites. Our findings suggest that federal e-government Web sites are not yet, in the aggregate, providing the same level of quality as their e-business counterparts. We also find significant variability among federal agencies. We discuss the implications of these findings for e-government performance measurement, performance benchmarking, and the market-centered theories of administrative reform that are driving e-government and similar transformations of government practice.     

Sex estimation from the mastoid process among North Indians

Determination of sex from fragmentary crania is a critical problem in forensic anthropology. Osteometric analysis of mastoid can serve forensic anthropologists better in sex identification by virtue of the noticeable dimorphic characteristics. The present study aims to develop population-specific, sex-differentiating anthropometric standards for the mastoid process of North Indian skulls. Eight parameters of the mastoid region were measured on 138 adult crania (M/F 104:34, 22-65 years) and analyzed using SPSS 16.0. All parameters showed significant sexual dimorphism (p < 0.000). In stepwise analysis, asterion-mastoidale and mastoid breadth have provided an accuracy of 87%. Receiver operating characteristic curves were obtained for each variable to observe their overall performance in sex determination. Posterior end of incisura mastoidea-depression of suprameatal triangle was found to be the best variable with maximum area under curve and highest predictive accuracy (82.6%).     

Democracy and modern political community: limits and possibilities

There are various limits to what is politically possible. The exigencies of economic production and exchange represent one crucial limit to possible political structures. Inherited Marxist and liberal conceptions of the relation between economic systems and political structures are incoherent; these relations need to be reconceived, yet recent socialist political thinking has preferred to focus mainly on the political domain, pursuing a theory of self-governing community. Can there today be a coherent account of such a theory? One way of showing there cannot is by pressing the question of the contours an dsubstance of modern political community. Optimistic theorists of self-governing community rely on a self-enclosed, determinate conception of community that has its imaginative roots in a vision of ancient liberty: the demos exercising legitimate and effective agency over a particular territory. But modern political community cannot be conceived of in this way: because of the presence of global processes of economic causality, there is today no fit between the territorial identity of a political community and its effective powers of agency. Modern liberty (unlike its ancient counterpart) has no specific or determinate location: its availability depends upon an elaborate division of economic and political labour. In these circumstances, it no longer makes sense to heighten the stakes of membership in a political community, as optimistic theorists of democracy do when they call for a more active and participatory civil society. The for appraising what forms of the division of political labour may be legitimate.     

Banking reforms and the evolution of cost efficiency in Indian public sector banks

This paper analyses the trends of cost efficiency and its components across Indian public sector banks (PSBs) during the post-deregulation period spanning from 1992/1993 to 2007/2008. The study also examines the issue of convergence in cost, technical and allocative efficiency levels of Indian PSBs. The empirical results indicate that deregulation has had a positive impact on the cost efficiency of Indian public sector banking industry over the period of study. Further, technical efficiency of Indian PSBs followed an uptrend, while allocative efficiency followed a path of deceleration. We note that in Indian public sector banking industry, the cost inefficiency is mainly driven by technical inefficiency rather than allocative inefficiency. The convergence analysis reveals that the inefficient PSBs are not only catching-up but also moving ahead of the efficient ones, i.e., the banks with the low level of cost efficiency at the beginning of the period are growing more rapidly than the highly cost efficient banks. In sum, the study confirms a strong presence of σ- and β-convergence in cost efficiency levels of Indian public sector banking industry.