Municipalities on the Web: User-Friendliness of Government Information on the Internet

Municipal websites are highly visible manifestations of e-government developments. Though the content and functionality of these websites are rapidly expanding, the usability of municipal websites is as yet underexposed. This paper reports on the results of a scenario-based evaluation of 15 Dutch municipal websites. Despite the often positive scores of the websites in national checklist-based rankings, an overwhelming number of usability problems was found with each scenario. A qualitative description is given of two important categories of user problems: navigation and perspective-taking. Both problem categories suggest that a strict HCI perspective on website evaluation may not suffice: it is the interplay between context, content and interface that will be crucial for the optimization of municipal websites.

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