World Wide Web Site Design and Use in Public Management

Abstract

The Word Wide Web (WWW) represents a major opportunity for local government to better the ways by which it interacts with local residents. The promise and reality of WWW applications are explored in this chapter. Four types of WWW applications are analyzed– bulletin board applications, promotion applications, service delivery applications, and citizen input applications. A survey of 145 municipality and county government web sites was conducted and the data is used to examine how local governments are actually using the WWW. The chapter concludes that the promise of the WWW has not yet been realized. Local government, while doing a fairly good job of implementing the less sophisticated uses of the WWW, must rethink the ways that it interacts with the citizenry in order to fully utilize WWW technologies. <BR>