Serving Citizens' Needs: Minimizing Hurdles to Accessing Government Information Online *

With the rapid spread of the Internet across society, government institutions are taking advantage of using digital technology to distribute materials to citizens. Is merely having a Web site enough or are there certain usability considerations to which site creators must adhere in order to assure efficient access to online materials? Here, I report on a project that looked at people’s ability to locate various types of content online. In particular, I focus on people’s ability to find tax forms on the Web. Findings suggest that people look for content in a myriad of ways and there is considerable variance in how long people take to complete this online task. Users are often confused by the ways in which content is presented to them. In this paper, I discuss two common sources of confusion in users’ online experiences with respect to locating tax forms online: 1. URL confusion; and 2. page design layout. In addition to describing these problem areas, I also suggest ways in which these two sources of frustration could easily be curtailed yielding less exasperating and more productive user experiences.