Evaluating Local Government Website Using a Synthetic Website Evaluation Model

Abstract

One of the main strands in e-government research focuses on evaluating the government website. Previous studies have developed several models of government website evaluation. Unfortunately, that rich exploration of the government's website study seems to be ignored in the Indonesian e-government literature. Against that backdrop, this study formulated a synthetic model of government' website evaluation based on previous models developed by other scholars. It deployed them to assess ten local government websites (Municipality/Regency) in East Kalimantan. The model consists of two broad dimensions: technical and democratic deliberation. On the technical dimension, by using the SortSite 5.3.5. software, it is found that the local governments' website performs relatively low on accessibility and errors on four metrics evaluated by the software. On the other side, on the democratic deliberation dimension, local government websites in East Kalimantan have performed relatively well in fulfilling the minimum of the democratic principle. We call it minimum because the websites have provided the user with basic information and several channels to interact with the officials.