Environment
Assuming that one of the aims of the municipality’s web sites is to increase the development and comfort of their citizens, this paper analyzes the aspects that will allow those sites to get a more effective approach to their citizens, increasing the delivery of services, information and participation.
Taking as a premise the intuition (the possibility to use new or unknown software by making an analogy with the applications that are frequently used), this analysis wants to establish similarities and differences on web sites’ design and functionality. National and international norms, regulations and publications are taken as a basis, in order to determine the most important aspects to perform the analysis. Finally, some aspects that have not been found in the quoted sources were included, according to the needs, capabilities and restrictions of the studied communities.
There are a high percentage of citizens that uses internet only to check email and other percentage doesn’t have enough resources (economical and/or technological) to access a computer. Within this environment Argentina begins to consider e-Governance as a tool to simplify citizen’s life.
Technological ignorance of a big percentage of citizens creates a very difficult barrier to avoid when terms like connectivity, Internet, Broad Band, and so on, are mentioned. Lots of communities choose a technological isolation and continue to do a lot of administrative procedures personally.
Administrative procedures generally mean long queues. A lot of people that tries to access web sites by curiosity or motivation of changing, finds a lot of interfaces, different types of connectivity, very despair pages and generally loosely design, turning this motivation in confusion.
It would be much easier for people that are no familiar with web site browsing, to find menus at the same position, have a site map to quickly find wanted information, and so on. If web sites would follow standards it would be easier to find required information in less time.
Design’s standards allow relating previously acquired concepts on using software tools, with others that are being used for the first time, allowing the user to count with basic knowledge for using the new software. Government’s web sites should have the same appearance and fulfill the same standards. These standards will be essential when using Internet to realize e-governance.
eGovernance
Following UNESCO (Castro & Mlikota, 2002), “e-governance regards adopting ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) normative by the public government with the aim of improving the delivery of information and services to their citizens. Therefore, it promotes the community participation in the decision making process in order to increase the government’s responsibility, transparency and effectiveness”.