Geographic information in eLocal government: evaluating online mapping applications in Irish local authorities

Abstract

This paper evaluates geographic applications provided on Irish local government websites through the application of a method developed by Campagna and Deplano (2004). This method assesses geographic applications against categories of content and technology with reference to public participation. Results from this and previous studies are used to produce a cross-country comparison between Ireland, Italy and Denmark. Irish geographic applications are generally static and represent traditional offline services, such as development plan maps. However, Ireland's provision of geographic applications online offers a similar level of content and technological complexity compared with the two other European examples. However, unlike Italy and Denmark, Ireland does not provide any applications which facilitate the download of data. A technologically oriented provision of one-way information dissemination (rather than a communicative, interactive or information sharing approach) has been taken by the majority of local governments in the three countries. While the online provision of printed material may ease access, this is unlikely to lead to increased public participation. The focus remains on information provision not information sharing. Encouraging public participation through eGovernment will require a more fundamental rethinking of local governance with a greater focus on providing the means to participate online.

Keywords:

• geographic information
• Internet
• local government
• eGovernment
• participation
• content technology matrix

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Bethanna Jackson, Toby Daglish, Garry Prendiville and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on this paper. The author would also like to acknowledge funding under the Trinity Postgraduate Award and Broad Curriculum Fellowship supplied by Trinity College, Dublin.

Notes

1. This estimate is based on local authority interviews by the author undertaken in 2006.

2. The ePlan is a database search tool for planning applications, while the gPlan can search graphically by geographic location. Further information provided by Laois County Council is available from: http://www.laois.ie/YourCouncil/Departments/ICT/GeographicalInformationSystemsGIS/PlanningGIS/.

3. Further details available at http://national.mobhaile.ie/.

4. Sieber (2006) provides a literature review and framework for PPGIS.

5. The figures are an amalgamation of the municipal and county authorities given in Campagna and Deplano (2004).

6. However, results should not be extrapolated to newer members of the EU where EU policies on eGovernment will not have time to permeate to local government.

7. For further details of the types of datasets provided see de Buitléir (2005).

8. Spatialisations are provided in both the original publications. However, due to a need to use a standard interpolation method the spatialisations were recreated here to allow for comparison.