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GCN Home > June 19, 2000 issue

Government Web sites must focus more on the user

Government Web sites must focus more on the user

Agencies need a site that will answer questions and adapt to e-business, a Michigan CIO says

By Dan Lohrmann
Special to GCN

When assessing real estate, experts say the three things that matter most are location, location and location. In information technology support, most federal technicians would say what matters is the user.


Michigan’s IT Services Division tries to personalize its Web sites to emphasize visitors’ own interests. It is developing a portal for online access to many state services.


But how user-focused are government Web sites? Do their managers concentrate too much on the future e-everything instead of looking after current needs?

Take a 15-minute cybertour of federal and state governments’ IT support Web sites, or even their non-IT sites, including some agency front pages. Start with your own IT division’s Web site or the portal for the site that supports your agency’s information systems.

Look for the main message of all these pages. Put yourself in a user’s shoes and ask, “Do I care about any of this?”

Some of the pages you’ll see are user-focused, but many are not and for those the message needs to change.

Not your mission

The theme of most government first- or second-generation Web sites is an agency’s mission and what it has accomplished, for example, readying its legacy systems for year 2000 compliance. Lists of frequently asked questions that are helpful to users are often buried deep within the site and difficult to find.

Likewise, government Web sites are good at calling attention to new reports, legislation, standards and so on. But is that what users with IT problems really want to know about?

Do you wonder why visitors don’t return to your agency’s site after a few times? How many of them are dying to read about your plans for asynchronous transfer mode or Gigabit Ethernet?

You may think that management already knows about these thematic deficiencies but that it will take several years to replace current computer systems or Web-enable your legacy applications and databases. You may have seen presentations about the evolution of Web sites toward optimized navigation, more personalization and a one-to-one business experience with full back-office database integration.



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