مدیریتWWW در مدیریت عمومی: استفاده ها و سوءاستفاده ها

The Internet has emerged as one of the most prevalent forms of communication media in and among public organizations. The construction and management of the World Wide Web (Web) sites are becoming essential elements of modern public administration. This study is intended to provide an in-depth evaluation on the Web sites of Taiwan’s central government based on the Web performance indicators provided by Nielsen (2000). Based on the Nielsen’s indicators, the authors carefully studied and coded each individual Web site of Taiwan central governmental agencies. The coding results indicate that the government Web sites in general have made many of the mistakes as predicted by Nielsen. Most of the agencies need to improve the coordination between Web designers and the line mangers of the agencies. In light of these research findings, this article provides a number of strategies to improve the Web design practices of Taiwanese public organizations that may also apply to public organizations in general.

The Internet has emerged as one of the most prevalent communication media in and among public organizations. Various surveys have documented the rapid diffusion of the Web in public administration and signaled the profound changes taking place in public managers’ work settings (e.g., http://www.cyprg.azrizona.edu). While the construction and management of Web sites are becoming essential elements of modern public administration, little is known about the effectiveness of the public Web sites. Given the substantial investment in time and other resources being committed to governmental on-line efforts, it is essential to begin undertaking the evaluation of governmental agency Web sites in terms of quality and effectiveness. To remedy the lack of evaluation research on governmental Web sites, the authors conducted a national study on the public Web sites of the central government in Taiwan. The central government of Taiwan consists of thirty-three ministry level agencies in charge of the national affairs of the various policy areas. We chose to study at the level of the central government for several reasons, including the early development of Web sites at the central governmental agencies, the relative diversity of the ministry functions and organizations, and their tractability as units of analysis when compared to the lower levels of the government. Following the reinventing government movement in the U.S. Gore 1994 and Osborne and Gaebler 1992, the central government of Taiwan launched its own large-scale administrative reform aimed at modernizing the governmental services soon after the reelection of the President Lee Teng-Hui in 1996. A major theme of the reform effort has been the revamping of the central government’s management information system. The Prime Minister asserted that he was going to establish an “electronic government,” and the first step was to help the government agencies go on-line (Wei, 1999). By the time the authors conducted this study, this reform had been underway for approxumately four years. While all of the central governmental agencies have established their own publicly accessible Web sites for at least two years, there has been virtually no systematic evaluation to assess these on-line efforts. The increasing transparency of the Internet leads to questions of its impact on the administrative ethics of the public employees (Menzel, 1998) as well as on the personal and organizational behaviors of the citizens (e.g., Hsian, 1999). However, there is a lack of evaluation about the contents of governmental Web sites. The study reported in this study conducted structured content analysis on the governmental Web sites in the context of Web usability. The objectives of this study were to provide useful management recommendations in terms of Web site design, and to suggest a systematic way for assessing public Web sites in general.

This research not only provides a systematic evaluation on the existing governmental Web sites in Taiwan, but more importantly, offers a useful guide for those who are interested in undertaking Web application development in public management to study the governmental Web sites. Due to the unique nature of the Web, those who are new to the Web are likely to commit many of the same mistakes as those described in this paper, unless they learn from others’ experience. We agree that the main reason that Web design mistakes happen so often is that their designers generally do not use the sites they design on a regular basis (Argus Associates, http://argus-inc.com/design/Webarch.html; Rosenfeld & Morville, 1998). It is suggested that both constant surveillance of Web sites, and periodic, more systematic evaluation of the Web defining, designing and producing processes to be undertaken to maintain the usability of a Web site. Web designers have to examine their works from the users’ point of view. While there is no standard procedure for developing a successful Web site, public managers can start learning the appropriate design practices by avoiding the common mistakes Web designers usually make. (Applehans et al 1999: Brand 1994, Choo 1995, Jones 1999, Lemay 1998, Mok 1996, Nielsen 1998, Rosenfeld 1995, Rubin 1994 and Wiig 1993)