Local Government Website Management Methodology

These websites ought to provide various categories of information in a clear and comprehensiblemanner for different groups of consumers. Each of these groups is interested in a particularcontent (information, documents, applications) which should be easily and intuitivelyaccessed. For example, city-dwellers would be interested in administrative matters,opportunities to receive advice on administrative procedures, legislative issues andopportunities to conduct such business with the use of Internet applications. Touristsand visitors would look for information about tourist attractions, current and plannedevents, city life and accommodation. Another important group are investors who wouldsearch for information about investment opportunities in a city investment area, bidsand auctions etc.). These groups of customers will include foreigners who have thesame information needs like Polish residents (except for a part of city-dwellers). In additionto problems regarding information itself (what and how it is to be provided), therewill also be problems connected with language versions, incomplete information in differentlanguages or correctness of translation. People or foreign companies which couldnot find relevant information on a LGU website are often no longer willing to establishcontact or even visit the place e.g. for tourism or education. The problem of usability ofLGU websites is crucial as it directly shapes the image of a city and may also indirectlyinfluence its development (in the fields of tourism, education, business). Needless tosay, if information cannot be found on the Internet it is treated as if it never existed. Aftera few unsuccessful attempts the user quits the website what leads to loss of opportunities.Both in Polish and foreign literature on subject matter there is not enough researchwhich would include comprehensive studies of usability and relevance ofthe content and structure of LGU websites.The author of this dissertation decided to fill the existing gap by proposing the referentialmodel of the LGU website (pattern), which would provide guidance both on theeffective design of new LGU websites and optimisation of the existing ones. Scope andstructure of the analysed issues require searching for solutions towards identification ofimportant information categories which should be included in LGU websites and definitionof their basic structure. The structure of the referential model of LGU website hasto meet requirements relating to its standardization, to allow duplication (adjustment) of proposed solution to many other real-world situations (Internet websites of differentlocal government units).The main goal of this thesis is to create a referential model of a local governmentwebsite containing relevant information for local and foreign users. The studied arearefers to the three important subjects: investments, business and tourism. These threeissues are important to local governments, since they allow increasing income by attractinginvestors, businessmen and tourists. Additional aims include as following:The analysis of current local government websites in terms of relevance of information.The design of (website tracking) software which would analyse the access pathsto information and time required by the user to get information.The established hypothesis states that use of the aggregate method and theexamination of existing LGU websites enable development of a referential model ofa website that includes information relevant to local and foreign users.the work will include a design and implementation of a web tracking system built by the researcher. The aim of software development is to obtain atool for measuring usability of LGU websites, including time needed to find information,tracking path to this information, number of links required to find informationetc.