Digital States Survey Empowering the Digital Citizen Arizona and Washington provide the best digital options to date. Digital democracy is an essential component of e-government. Any democracy is only as strong as it involves citizens in active participation in electoral and legislative processes. The digital democracy portion of the Digital States Survey assesses the extent to which citizens have access to laws, legislatures and democratic processes through the Internet.
Citizens have access to the business of legislatures in ways they never did before.
For several years now, the majority of states have displayed proposed legislation on Web sites, provided access to existing state statutes, and offered e-mail access to the governor. In this year's survey, questions were designed to assess the scope of Internet access and degree of participation possible. The states that scored highest have invested significantly in creating digital avenues for greater citizen participation. Tied for first place in the Digital Democracy category are Arizona and Washington. Both states, in fact, received 100 percent ratings, fully reaching the participatory bar set in this survey.