eCitizen Portal Scores a Hit

At the recent Hitwise Online Performance Award, the www.ecitizen.gov.sg portal won an award for the most popular government services website. Hitwise, an online competitive intelligence service, measures performance of websites based on market share of visits from Internet users in a local market. Singapore's first ever online awards were awarded to the most popular industry websites of more than 160 different industries.

www.ecitizen.gov.sg was the most popular winner in the 'Government - National 'category. The eCitizen portal brings e-Government to the citizens of Singapore by allowing them to access government services online.

According to Mr Lo Yoong Khoong, Deputy Director, Electronics Services of IDA who collected the award, "We are most heartened that the eCitizen portal is ranked top amongst the Government websites in Singapore. The high visit rate to the portal is testimony to the commitment and efforts put in by the Singapore Government to provide customers with a single access point to all government services and information, covering all essential touch-points in a citizen's life conveniently."

Measurements were based on the Internet usage of over 1.5 million Singapore Internet users visiting over 10,000 local websites during 2005. The Awards were organised by online competitive intelligence service Hitwise along with sponsors AdAsia and Yahoo!, and monitored internet usage drawing on raw data and figures from ISPs.

The awards themselves showed some interesting trends amongst Singapore's Internet users. Music download website www.soundbuzz.com.sg, was the most popular Shopping and Classifieds website.

Yahoo Singapore was a big winner with eight awards. According to Reza Behnam, Managing Director, Yahoo! Southeast Asia, "It's a great honor to see eight Yahoo! properties, including www.yahoo.com.sg, being recognized and endorsed by the community as the most locally relevant Internet destinations in Singapore."

For the eCitizen portal, Mr Lo says that IDA and the Ministry of Finance will build on the current success to improve the electronic service experience for customers and to encourage greater usage of government services online.