Managing WWW in public administration: Uses and misuses☆

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. © 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. This article is presented in the 2000 LENTIC “Which Public Administration in the Information Society?” Colloquium in Brussels, Belgium, May 18–19, 2000. We are grateful to the participants of the colloquium for their feedback C. James Huang is an Assistant Professor of Policy and Management in the Department of Public Policy and Management at Shih-Hsin University. His Publications focus on public management reforms, including strategic management, human resource management, and Web management. Mei-Hui Chao is a User Experience Designer at Yahoo! Her research and teaching interests focus on Web design and Usability Engineering. Contact: 011–886-2–23602085; 011–886-2–86635002 (Fax); [email protected] * Corresponding author. Tel.: 886 2 22368225 ext. 3465; fax: 886 2 22363325 E-mail address: [email protected] (C. Huang). Pergamon Government Information Quarterly 18 (2001) 357–373 0740-624X/01/$ – see front matter © 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. PII: S0740-624X(01)00085-5