【精品】[外文4]Quantitative assessment of European municipal web sites_ Development and use of an evaluation tool

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available /1066-2243.htmQuantitative assessment ofEuropean municipal web sitesDevelopment and use of an evaluation toolFrancisco Javier Miranda, Ramon Sanguino andTomas M. BanegilFacultad de Ciencias Economicas y Empresariales, University of Extremadura,Badajoz, SpainAbstractPurpose The internet is becoming increasingly important in the communication between localgovernments and citizens, which makes the usability of municipal web sites a critical factor ingovernment-citizen communication. The purpose of this paper is to propose and test a model forevaluating the potential of municipal web sites.Design/methodology/approach In this work an objective investigation of the issue has beenconducted by manually accessing and evaluating 84 European municipal web sites. Quality of webhome pages was determined using an original Web Assessment Index, which focuses on fourcategories: accessibility, speed, navigability and content.Findings A detailed report of the results arising from this investigation is presented andsystematically analyzed.Originality/value The most valuable output from this paper is not the ability to identify the bestsites, but to see how each municipal site is compared to related sites and to spot ideas and practicesthat can improve city sites. These ndings will be useful for both researchers and practitioners whoseek to understand the issues relevant to municipal e-government.Keywords Worldwide web, Internet, Local government, EuropePaper type Research paper1. IntroductionThe greatest potential for internet use in public organizations lies in applicationsdesigned to facilitate open communication between agencies and create dialoguebetween citizens and their government.So, the internet has become an important communication channel betweenmunicipalities and citizens. Municipal web sites enable to make enormous amounts ofinformation available at relatively low costs, to maintain an easily recognizabledissemination channel to their target groups, offering 24-hour per day service and tostay tuned in to the citizens needs.In the electronic age the barriers to government information (as lack of nancial,technical or personnel capacity, privacy issues, etc.) may be as real as the physical andintellectual barriers to information in the age of print culture. Although electronic mediamay seem to provide universal access to information and specically to governmentinformation, without clear policies and guidelines focused on this outcome, the citizensaccess to information, and the governments accountability for information provisionmay be reduced rather than enhanced (Cullen and Houghton, 2000).Europeanmunicipalweb sites425Received 7 December 2007Revised 13 May 2009Accepted 27 May 2009Internet ResearchVol. 19 No. 4, 2009pp. 425-441q Emerald Group Publishing Limited1066-2243DOI 10.1108/10662240910981380INTR19,4426One of the fascinating aspects of municipal web sites is that the design problem (theneed to achieve a presence on the internet) is roughly the same for all municipalitiesacross western democratic countries, whereas the design solutions (the web sitesactually designed) appear to be very different (de Jong and Lentz, 2006).Little research has been conducted on analyzing the worldwide movement to digitalgovernment from a comparative perspective. Researchers at Brown University haveconducted a content analysis of state and federal government web sites in the USAsince 2000, and they also completed a worldwide analysis of central government websites in 2001 (/policyreports.html). Their research, however,lacks a comprehensive framework for evaluating digital governance.Best practice awards conducted by the Center for Digital Government and theMicrosoft Corporation () and “Best of the Best” ine-government (/showPR.asp?id 62) are good examples of attemptsto measure whether and how digital government investments are resulting inimproved services for citizens.This research evaluated the current practice of digital governance in the largestEuropean municipalities, assessing the effectiveness of municipal web sites inproviding equitable and appropriate access to government information to all citizens,allowing researchers and managers to compare attributes and components of internetsites, in order to determine the drawbacks and opportunities. For this, we develop aweb site assessment index that can be employed to compare the current usage of theInternet by municipalities. We begin by identifying the main factors considered asdeterminants of web site quality, as mentioned in previous studies. Secondly wediscuss the design of the web assessment index. Then, municipal web sites of mostpopulated European cities are subsequently analyzed using this index. Finally, themain results of this analysis are discussed and future research directions are outlined.2. Web site assessment toolsEvaluating the performance of web sites has been a constant concern of researchers indifferent elds. A review of the recent literature on web site assessment reveals someattempts to measure web site quality (Selz and Schubert, 1997; Liu et al., 1997; Ho, 1997;Evans and King, 1999; Simeon, 1999; Huizingh, 2000; Young and Benamati, 2000;Bauer and Scharl, 2000; Palmer, 2002).Although some researchers have tried to provide ways of evaluating web sitesspecically (Boyd, 2002; van der Merwe and Bekker, 2003), the selection of evaluationcriteria still requires more theoretical justication. Most of the previous approacheshave focused either on basic management content or a specic set of web siteoutcomes. Most previous assessment models employ subjective factors, such aseasy-access, text clearness, presentation quality, attractiveness of colors, sounds, etc.To minimize this subjectivity site evaluators should be given precise guidelines to rateeach factor and a large group of evaluators is needed (Evans and King, 1999).Trying to avoid the main weaknesses of previous models, Buenadicha et al. (2001)developed a new web site assessment index that can be employed to compare thecurrent use of the internet by different organizations. This model has been previouslyemployed to compare the internet usage from the 200 largest Spanish companies(Miranda and Banegil, 2004) and more recently applied to Spanish banks (Mirandaet al., 2006).According to Evans and King (1999), a web assessment tool must have ve maincomponents: categories, factors, weights, ratings and total score. The rst step is tochoose the categories and factors that are critical to web site effectiveness. Based onprevious studies (Buenadicha et al., 2001; Miranda et al., 2006), our instrument forevaluating city and municipal web sites (Web Assessment Index or WAI) selects fourbroad categories as the basis for a quality web site: accessibility, speed, navigabilityand site content (Figure 1).Developers of public-sector web sites must assume that those using their sites havelimited training and experience and will need sites designed for ease of use. They mustalso consider that the type of (web site) designs developed for private-sectore-commerce sites might not necessarily work for public-sector sites. Our researchinstrument goes well beyond previous research to evaluate government web sites(West, 2000; West, 2001; Kaylor et al., 2001). The key factors within each category arechosen based on the literature and the researchers experience, and must reect whatusers are generally considered to be important components and features of web sites.The rst category in the Web Assessment Index (WAI) is accessibility. It is clearthat the quality of a web site is increased if the site is easily identiable and accessibleto the users. However, merely counting “hits” on a page is not an accuratemeasurement of quality or success of a web site (Murray, 1997). In order to actuallyevaluate the accessibility of a web site, we need to dene objective measurablequantities. Therefore, the authors have employed two factors to measure this category,search engines presence and link popularity:Europeanmunicipalweb sites427.Higher search engines rankings translate into greater trafc to the site andtherefore, increase its degree of accessibility. In the present work, to evaluate thisfactor we have chosen Google, because this search engine is the most frequentlyused by European internet users.The second indicator used to measure accessibility is the site-popularity. Themost common measure of web performance is the number of “hits” a sitegenerates. However, there are accuracy problems associated with this type ofmeasurement, because there are some methods to articially increase the numberof hits. Therefore, the total number of hits does not necessarily correspond to theactual number of visits to the site.Figure 1.Web site qualityassessment modelINTR19,4428Taking this into account, we decided to employ a different kind of measurement: wedened “link popularity” as the number of external links on the web that point to theweb site being analyzed. The advantages of a large number of links to a site areevident: rst, the more sites that link to you, the more trafc you can expect to receive,and second, major search engines will improve your page ranking when you have morelinks to your web site (Miranda and Banegil, 2004). For example, Google uses linkpopularity as the most important factor when ranking sites, so if you want to have asuccessful web site, you must have high link popularity. Although attracting users inmunicipal web sites with external links is the fact of not so important as in business,we consider that external links could be a valid indicator of web accessibility. In thisstudy we have used the Link Popularity Check a freeware program that checks the linkpopularity status of a web site on several search engines and compares it to other websites on the internet.Access speed and response time are obviously very signicant, because time isalways a critical factor. Some studies have revealed that there is a signicantcorrelation between web site download speed and web user satisfaction (Muylle et al.,1998; Hoffman and Novak, 1996). The time it takes for a page to download is importantfor making it easily accessible to every citizen interested in accessing online municipalservices.The access speed has been measured with a chronometer, but this recording isinuenced by a great number of factors such as hardware employed, connection time,web trafc etc. In order to minimize these sources of error, the tests were carried out atthe same time with the same computer. Web browsing was undertaken by using themost popular browser, Internet Explorer 6.0. The sites were repeatedly accessed onconsecutive days to obtain more representative average speed measurements.The third category in our index is what we call navigability. Poor web design willresult in a loss of potential sales due to users being unable to nd what they want, anda loss of potential repeated visits due to an initial negative experience. Given that usersshould never feel lost, each page should be self-sufcient and provide links to the maincontents. In terms of navigation, our analysis focused on the consistency of thenavigation style. Navigation bars should be present on every web site, in order to allowquick access through the entire site, particularly for those web sites with large amountsof content. So, the hallmark of a good site is that the site index should always be ondisplay, thereby making it very easy for anybody to reach the desired location fastenough. So, following the research of Miranda et al. (2006), the factors used to assessthis category are the following:.Permanent site menu allowing a rapid access to the different sections from everypage.Web site map, for users to locate available interesting items within the companyhome page.Content is a critical component of any web site. No matter how technologicallyadvanced a web sites features, if its content is not current or if the informationprovided is not correct, then it is not fullling its purpose. The content quality of theweb site will be measured assessing the presence of information relevant to the users.A site must have contents that satisfy users needs and it should be frequently updated.Municipal web sites can contain various features, including municipal servicesinformation, contact information to enable customer feedback, general cityinformation, etc.Important information should be immediately accessible. If 80 percent of your usersare seeking 20 percent of your information, then that information should be the mostvisible and the easiest accessible. Basic contact information of the organization shouldbe on the main menu page and related information should be grouped together ratherthan scattered in different sections of the site.The factors selected to quantify content quality were based on site contentsidentied in previous studies (Young and Benamati, 2000; Huizingh, 2000; Buenadichaet al., 2001; Miranda and Banegil, 2004; Miranda et al., 2006), practitioner journals andthe researchers experience. Moon (2002) developed a framework for categorizinge-government1 models based on the following components: informationdissemination, two-way communication, services, integration, and politicalparticipation. Our methodology for evaluating municipal e-government servicesincludes such components; however, we have added some additional factors. We haveconsidered three sets of factors to assess the content of a web site using a binary no/yesscale:Informational factorsProviding online services to citizens, businesses, and other government employees isthe most important part of an effective public-sector web site. So, municipal web sitesare largely informational. Content must be useful, generic services must be offered, andservice provision mechanisms such as these must be extended consistently. Therefore,we have considered the following informational factors:Europeanmunicipalweb sites429.Buses, museums and libraries information.Cultural information (theatres, cinemas and music concerts). City history.Travel information.Weather forecast.Statistical information.Hospital, re and emergency information.Public employment information.Municipal laws information.Council meetings dates.Budget information.Strategic plan. Municipal organizational chart.Public service information.Tourist information.Investment project information.Security and privacy policy.External links.INTR19,4430E-government factorsA critical component of e-government is the provision of municipal services online. Inmany jurisdictions, cities and municipalities allow online users to le or pay localtaxes, or pay nes such as trafc tickets. In some cases, cities around the world areallowing their users to register or purchase tickets to events in city halls or arenasonline.Another interesting area of e-government includes using the internet to engagecitizens in democratic processes. Citizen participation in government is a ripe area fore-government, in part because the Internet is a convenient mechanism for citizen-usersto engage in their government, and also because of the potential to decentralizedecision-making. Despite that potential, very few municipal web sites offer onlineopportunities for civic engagement.Finally, the e-government content features that are found in each of the searchedweb sites can be included in the following categories: downloadable forms,e-administration features, current state of administrative process, online taxpayment and citizen participation.Communicational factorsGiven that web sites are often entry points to a city and visitors typically want toobtain access to information about the city, contact information for the council shouldbe on the main menu page and therefore easily accessible. More broadened contactinformation is a benet for citizens.In order to evaluate the communicational capacity of each web site we identiedwhether the site contains the following items:.News online updated.Complaints and comments e-mail.Telephone/e-mail directory.Contact information.Users feedback tools (e-mail bulletin). Discussion forums.To ensure reliability, each municipal web site was assessed in the native language bytwo evaluators, and in those cases where signicant variations (over or under 10percent) were shown on the raw score between evaluators, web sites were analyzed athird time.After dening them, all the categories and factors were weighted (based on a total of100 points). These weightings have been assigned from the analysis of previousstudies (Evans and King, 1999; Bauer and Scharl, 2000; Buenadicha et al., 2001;Miranda and Banegil, 2004; Miranda et al., 2006) and have taken into account the viewsof different internet expert users. Moreover, to ensure the reliability of this assignment,ten web sites users were recruited as evaluators. Each web site user provided therelative importance of the different categories in the instrument. First, users distributed100 points among the four major categories. Results were analyzed for an indication ofinter-rater reliability using standard correlation procedures for estimating agreementcorrected for chance. A Delphi analysis allowed us to establish the nal list of itemsand their weights.The use of these subjective weightings may be considered as the main limitation ofour study; however, some recent studies (Miranda et al., 2006) have employed similarweightings.Mean values of the weights obtained for the different categories and subcategoriesof municipal web sites are shown in Table I.Europeanmunicipalweb sites431CategoriesAccessibilityPresence in search enginesPopularitySpeedAccess speed (in seconds)NavigabilitySite mapPermanent site menuContents qualityInformational contentBuses, museums and libraries informationCultural i