The ultimate checklist for local eGovernment websites

Jan Van den Bergh mailed me a link to the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, a public academic journal on internet related communication research. He found this source through the Association of Internet Researcher mailing list., which is a very useful resource and I somehow lost track of it since I moved to i-merge almost a year ago. In this issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, an article called "metropolitan websites as urban communication" caught my attention. In this article the authors conducted a research on how municipal websites scored on a set of more than 50 functions they ought to fulfil. These functions are clustered into three domains:

1. Mass communication functions
2. Institutional communication functions
3. Community communication functions

Let me get a little bit more into detail...

The mass communication functions of a local community website consist of these four subfunctions:

• "Surveillance Function" measures the extent to which the municipal website informs residents of city activities, provides news about current programs, and alerts residents to potential problems under the city's purview.
• "Coordination Function" measures the extent to which the website
  provides audiences with information or opportunities to contact city
  departments or officials or to participate in official business by
  attending public meetings.
• "Socialization Function" gauges whether the municipal websites provided
  residents, potential residents, and visitors with historical
  information about the city and its culture.
• "Entertainment Function" reflects whether the municipal websites
  provided residents with entertainment via such venues as fun photos of
  community highlights or provided information about community
  entertainment/activities that would fulfill this function externally.

The Institutional communication functions of a local government website consist of three subfunctions:

• "Local Government" describes the extent to which municipal websites provided information about elected officials, representation and election processes, government organization, formal lines of authority and offices, and links between officials and constituents.
• "Public Service Provider" indicates the extent to which municipal
  websites provided information about the traditional city services—from
  police and transportation to garbage collection, schools, and
  health—and solicited feedback about the delivery of such services to
  the public.
• "Economic Developer" profiles whether municipal websites performed
  their economic roles by soliciting businesses and acting as an
  entrepreneur forming partnerships among and with private entities in
  addition to appealing to tourists and potential residents.

The community communication functions are subdivided into:

• "Community Identifier" pinpoints the extent to which municipal websites provided their residents information that would facilitate cultivation of community identity.
• "Community Mobilizer" depicts whether municipal websites exhorted
  residents to get involved and to assert an impact on city government
  and development, in addition to whether they provided information about
  neighborhood organizations and how to activate citizen participation.

This, however is just the theoretical framework. The researcher actually managed to translate these functions and subfunctions into a very tangible checklist they used to evaluate 50 metropolitan websites. I think this checklist is a very usefull tool for our local governments as well.

Links: Metropolitan Websites as Urban Communication.