Agnes Mainka et al.
Seoul’ s e‐Government has been ranked # 2 in this usability test. The site is clearly arranged and important information is easily accessible on the homepage. The navigation system is worded in a clear and understandable manner. A lot of information can be found on the website, and yet the site is not overloaded. In addition, it is very attractively designed.
Shanghai’ s government website took third place in this usability ranking. Test users indicated that information on the website is easily accessible and the navigation system is well‐structured.
5. Discussion
In conclusion, the maturity of the 31 analysed e‐Governments is more or less sub‐optimal. Even the top‐ranked website, New York ' s, only scored 70 % for all scrutinised aspects. The arithmetic mean of all maturity values is 210 points( out of 400). This means that about half of the described aspects are missing. There is a huge potential for optimising the maturity of e‐Governments.
Similarly, there is a grave fluctuation in the usability of e‐Governments ' navigation systems. The mean average of all usability values is 720 points( out of 1,000), which is quite a good result. The top‐ranked Informational World City, Vienna, has scored 927 out of 1,000 potential points, meaning that all information could be retrieved almost immediately.
The correlation( Pearson) between the values for maturity and usability is + 0.30, which indicates a weak( positive) link between both values.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Dr. Chang Kaiser for her support in analysing the Chinese websites. Furthermore, we are grateful to our test users for spending a working day on our experiment.
References
Al‐Khalifa, H. S.( 2010). The accessibility of Saudi Arabia government Web sites: an exploratory study. Universal Access in the Information Society, 11( 2), 201‐210.
Bonsón, E., Torres, L., Royo, S., and Flores, F.( 2012). Local e‐government 2.0: Social media and corporate transparency in municipalities. Government Information Quarterly, 29( 2), 123‐132. Cabinet Office( 2005). eAccessibility of Public Sector Services in the European Union. Retrieved from www. rnib. org. uk Castells, M.( 1989). The Informational City. Information Technology, Economic Restructuring, and the Urban‐Regional
Process. Oxford, United Kingdom, Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell. Castells, M.( 1994). European cities, the Informational society, and the global economy. New Left Review, 204, 18‐32. Chen, Y., Chen, Y., and Shao, M.( 2006). 2005 accessibility diagnosis on the government web sites in Taiwan. In Proceedings of the 2006 International Cross‐Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility( W4A). Retrieved from www. w4a. info /. Cook, M. E.( 2000). What Citizens Want from E‐Government. Albany, NY: Center for Technology in Government. Coursey, D., and Norris, D.( 2008). Models of e‐government: Are they correct? An empirical assesment. Public
Administration Review, 68( 3), 523‐536. Ergazakis, K., Metaxiotis, K., and Psarras, J.( 2004). Towards knowledge cities: Conceptual analysis and success stories.
Journal of Knowledge Management, 8( 5), 5‐15. Friedmann, J.( 1995). Where we stand. A decade of world city research. In P. Knox, & P. Taylor( Eds.), World Cities in a
World‐System( pp. 21‐47). Cambridge, UK, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Friedrichs, S., Hart, T., and Schmidt, O.( Eds.)( 2002). E‐Government. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann. Florida, R. L.( 2005). Cities and the Creative Class. NewYork, NY: Routledge. Gfs. bern.( 2011). E‐Government Initiativen müssen breite Bevölkerung erfassen. Retrieved 29 November, 2012 from http:// www. news. admin. ch / NSBSubscriber / message / attachments / 24572. pdf. Gisler, M.( 2001). Electronic government – mehr als eine Website. DISP, 144, 32‐38. Glaeser, E. L., Scheinkman, J., and Shleifer, A.( 1995). Economic growth in a cross‐section of cities. Journal of Monetary
Economics, 36( 1), 117‐143. Hiller, J., and Bélanger, F.( 2001). Privacy Strategies for Electronic Government. Retrieved 02 January, 2012 from www. businessofgovernment. org. Hollands, R. G.( 2008). Will the real smart city please stand up? City, 12( 3), 303‐320. Holzer, M., and Kim, S.( 2008). Digital Governance in Municipalities Worldwide( 2007) – A Longitudinal Assessment of
Municipal Websites Throughout the World. National Center for Public Performance: United States of America. Hwang, J. S.( 2009). U‐City. The next paradigm of urban development. In M. Foth( Ed.), Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics. The Practice and Promise of the Real‐Time City( pp. 367‐378). Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference.
299