Electronic governance has received much interest worldwide and a significant amount of attention and money is being put into making e-governance a reality. Proper assessment of e-governance projects gives us crucial information on the kinds of changes needed in order to make them successful.International ratings are extremely important in relation to comparing the achievements of different countries, analysing their experiences and making decisions about further development. On the other hand, a country's ranking position forms or adjusts the world's attitude toward this country.This article discusses the possible problem when a high position in such ranking becomes an aim in itself and determines the misdirection of e-Governance development -in this, the case we have chosen to study is Russia.

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This article considers the results of a comparative analysis of three e-petition portals in: Russian, the UK and the USA. The authors have developed a set of comparison criteria and identified similarities and differences in the will expression process development of citizens from various countries on the Internet. The advantages of the UK portal are as follows: simple registration, open petition publishing, clear attachment to the petition-reviewing authority. The US portal is considered to be much more practical when compared to the non-electronic petition filing procedure in the country and, moreover, it continues to collect signatures after the submission to the authority. The Russian portal is notable for its clear separation and representation of initiatives on the federal, regional and municipal levels.

International rankings of e-participation development provide useful information for making strategic decisions for a more successful information society development. However, when we start the interpretation of the ranking details, it is important to consider the context, as well as national factors and existed barriers on the way. The paper presents some results and conclusions drawn from the expert survey and aiming to detect the factors which affect e-participation development in Russia. The authors conducted an expert poll with the participation of 41 experts from government, business, NGO, scientific and education structures, and city-activists. The survey results allowed to detect the target of eparticipation tools development in Russia; to determine the factors that influence positively and negatively on its development. The major finding of the survey showed the following trend: e-participation tools in Russia served to optimize the authorities' work and fight such barriers as administrative, regulative and lack of citizens' trust in e-participation tools.

In this paper the analysis of e-governance monitoring methods is given. The article includes international measurement techniques description.The authors introduce expert poll methodology for egovernance development assessment and the results of it's application in Russia.