E-Government Portals Personalization

Several governments across the world enhance their attempt to provide efficient, advanced, and modern services to their users (citizens and businesses) based on information and computer technologies (ICT) and especially the Web. The remarkable acceptance of this powerful tool has changed the way of conducting various transactions and offers citizens, businesses, and public authorities’ limitless options and opportunities. Besides citizens’ awareness and expectations of Web-based, public services have also increased in recent times. E-governments’ Web portals serve as integrated gateways through which millions of users can access information, services, and other available applications. The complexity and functionality of these Web portals vary significantly from information publishing, linking of existing Web sites, or single agency transactions, to transactions requiring integration of multiple agencies operating as fully one-stop shops for citizens (Gant & Burley Gant, 2002). The problem arises when e-government portals turn out to large collections of sources and the users suffer from this information overload. To alleviate this problem, personalization becomes a popular remedy to customise the Web environment for users. Web personalization can be described as any action that makes the Web experience of a user personalized to his or her needs and wishes. This article presents the way an e-government portal can deploy personalization techniques in order to support intelligent interactions with e-citizens. Specifically, it defines Web personalization, describes the tasks that typically comprise the personalization process, and demonstrates the close relation between personalization and Web mining. Finally, it illustrates the future trends and discusses the open issues in the field.