A Study of Local Government Website Inclusiveness: The Gap Between E-government Concept and Practice

Abstract

This study examines the concept of electronic government (e-government) inclusiveness and evaluates the inclusiveness of local e-government websites. Inclusiveness sets e-government apart from other types of websites (e.g. commercial or organizational sites) that only serve exclusive market segments. An evaluation for inclusiveness of 101 local government websites from Mississippi (an underdeveloped area by many health and social metrics) revealed (1) a high frequency of issues that prevent inclusive service (on average each site had 291.83 issues), (2) high variability in terms of number of issues (range = [2, 3171]), and (3) widespread absence of websites (87 of the 188 municipalities and county seats did not have discoverable websites). These results suggest there is a need for more inclusiveness, but the allocation of resources to accomplish this may not be feasible. To address this, two strategic options are presented to information technology (IT) policy-makers who seek to leverage e-government for development: an idealistic approach with traditional IT investment for future returns and a pragmatic one that resembles an entrepreneurial IT start-up venture. The study contributes in three ways: we identify the concept and criteria of e-government inclusiveness; develop an automated, software-based, and replicable evaluation method that can be used by local governments to improve a website's inclusiveness; and present strategic options for using e-government to promote social and economic development.

Keywords:

• eGovernment
• IT policy
• IT infrastructures for public administration and reform

Notes on contributors

Barry A. Cumbie, Ph.D., teaches and researches in the areas of information systems and operations management. His interests include the adoption and usage of technological innovations, particularly large, institutional-wide systems including enterprise-wide, community-wide, electronic medical records, and e-government. Dr. Cumbie research in these topics is published in the International Journal of Information Systems in the Service Sector, Information Systems Frontiers, Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, Journal of Information System Security, and the Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application.

Bandana Kar, Ph.D., teaches and conducts research on advancing the concepts and applications of Geographic Information Science, and integrating them with environmental science to 1) assess uncertainty and accuracy of spatial models; 2) explore impacts of spatio-temporal scales of analysis on modeled outcomes; 3) investigate causes and consequences of location and data privacy violation; 4) develop methods/internet-GIS applications to disseminate scientific outcomes to stakeholders; 5) explore land use/cover changes and extract features from remote sensing images; and 6) predict the changing surface of risk/loss/vulnerability resulting from the social and physical environments' interaction.

Notes

1. PowerMapper.com's on-demand SortSite tool: http://www.powermapper.com/products/sortsite/index.htm.