citizens. These might include online mechanisms; service centres; self-serve kiosks; mobile devices; and express buses equipped with digital access, telephone hotlines and the like. The horizontal layer in blue and light blue represents agencies/ministries/departments and the information, services and/or processes they might provide/utilise. These are likely to encompass everything from Government entities responsible for healthcare to those responsible for immigration, taxation, education, customs and trade, business registration and regulation, transportation and citizen registration. The foundation service infrastructure beneath the blue layer might be thought of as the tier that authenticates users and services, providing unique identifiers for both user and supplier that validate all parties as legitimate. The common infrastructure layer sits as the model’s foundation. Represented by the horizontal brown pillars, it is simply the shared communications and data infrastructure that enables Internet connectivity and access to digital information. Completing the core of the model are the security controls and protocols vital to the safe delivery of online services and information, the vertical lavender-coloured column near the model’s centre. At the far right of the model are those activities and frameworks that support efficient E-Government delivery, such as capacity building, marketing and awareness, policy and legislation, and monitoring and evaluation, among others. Looking across countries, the public sector's engagement with ICT has gradually evolved from addressing the quality and efficiency of internal government, through making public service offerings available across traditional as well as electronic channels, to promoting administrative and institutional reform, engaging citizens in policy- and decision-making processes, and (more recently) directly supporting policy and development goals in health, education, security and other sectors. This evolution has incorporated a transformation from technological (ICT in Government), through organisational (Electronic Government), to socio-economic (Electronic Governance) orientations. Today in most countries, the focus is turning towards specific policy and development goals in business, trade, health, education, environment, governance, security and other sectors, taking into account specific local conditions and priorities. Pursuing “better government” puts the focus on capacity development, electronic commerce, research, policy support, education and network development. This in turn requires achieving productive relationships between different parts of government, as well as between government and citizens and businesses at the national as well as the regional levels. The role of different actors varies between countries but, in general, the government is expected to engage all relevant parties in innovation, collaboration and action to generate public value, typically requiring legal, institutional, cultural and other transformations. In order to pursue its vision, government must set performance targets and assess its progress in satisfying such targets. It is essential to find a way of defining both input and output measures, so as to be able to determine the level of productivity in key respects. At the end of the day, performances in specific respects stand to be compared with what resources have been allocated and consumed to enable them. In order for measures of performance to be meaningful, however, it is important to move away from simple quantitative estimates and incorporate serious considerations of relevance and quality improvements. The state of Belize’s business environment requires careful consideration in this regard. Typically, a government would be concerned with generating income through its tax regime, tariffs and perhaps export duties. At the same time, it also wishes to allow economic expansion to support higher revenues, a stronger state and more agreeable conditions for its population, and therefore would have reason to avoid imposing a burden on business through 25