Development Status and Problems of Portal Websites in China

Since 1999 started the government online project, the development of government websites has entered a new stage of "portal" development, and gradually became the leader of e-government construction, and the development of government portals has also promoted e-government construction to become the "leader" of promoting national informatization, which is a concentrated expression of the achievements of e-government construction. Through online government affairs, the development of informatization in the whole society has been promoted and promoted.

However, with the development of the government portal website today, some problems in the development are also clearly exposed, and the deviation in understanding is also increasingly apparent. In the future development, we must correct the deviation in the development of government portal websites and solve the existing problems.

First, the government portal construction and operation of the main confusion

Since the launch of 1999 government online project, most of the government portals built in cities and counties all over the country have been undertaken by the information systems originally affiliated to the State Planning Commission. However, with the change of institutional reform, the departments responsible for the construction of government portals have changed hands several times, which makes the management and operation of government portals nationwide basically unable to become an efficient system. In recent years, we have learned through different channels about the construction and operation of government portals at all levels in China.

First of all, the subordinate relationship is chaotic, especially in the departments that manage and operate government portals at the city and county levels. The management and operation departments of municipal and county government portals are subordinate to the Party Committee, the government, the Propaganda Department of the Party Committee, the Development and Reform Commission, the information industry department, the statistics department and individual departments directly under the municipal and county governments. Because these departments have different business subjects and different perspectives and emphases on a problem or a matter, the current government portals are various and inconvenient for the public to use.

Secondly, the management and operation of government portal departments are chaotic, some are managed with reference to the civil service approach, some are fully funded by the government, and some are balance allocation by the government. And some people work in the same website with different identities. In recent years, the frequent reform of public institutions has led to the situation that talents cannot be retained and mediocre people cannot do it in units with poor departmental nature.

Finally, the unit level is chaotic. The outstanding performance is the department that manages and runs the government portal website at the municipal level, which is roughly divided into two levels.

The first of the above three chaos makes the system functions of the departments that manage and run government portals at all levels unable to play, which leads to various ways to build government portals. The difference between the second point and the third point makes the role of talents not play out and affects people's subjective enthusiasm.

Therefore, the management and operation departments of government portals at all levels urgently need the state to solve the problem of chaotic management and operation subjects of government portals, so that they can play a systematic role and lay the necessary foundation, system and management guarantee for standardizing the construction and operation of government portals in the future.

Starting from the healthy development of the cause, it is suggested that the management and operation subjects of government portals at all levels should be independent from their respective subordinate institutions, because the work of government portals dominates the online services and office affairs of all government departments, and the existing party and government departments have their own main businesses. Turning such an overall e-government construction and management work, especially the management and operation of government portals, into a subordinate business of a department is not conducive to the development of e-government. After independence, it is called e-government, which is directly responsible by the executive deputy of governments at all levels or the secretary-general of the government, so that the departments responsible for the management and operation of government portals have the right to supervise, inspect and assess the behavior of government departments on government portals while serving all government departments, so that the departments responsible for the management and operation of government portals have the right to do their own jobs, which is conducive to the development of the work. In addition, the management and operation of government portals at all levels become a system, which will bring great benefits to the unified planning and management of government portals, help solve the second problem mentioned below, and also save a lot of management and operation costs and improve efficiency.

Due to the various subordinate relationships between the management and operation subjects of government portals at all levels, the subjective consciousness and emphasis of website construction are different, and the understanding of the functions and functions of government portals is biased. Therefore, there is a second problem to be solved urgently.

Two, the government portal itself is in urgent need of unified supervision

In today's society, people's mobility is increasing. For various needs, a person may need to know something about several cities in a short time, and the government portals of various cities have become the first choice to know this information. At present, many domestic government portals have some problems, such as confusing content classification, unclear positioning and unclear service target. When we browse the government portals of different cities as the public, we must search patiently and carefully, just like entering a maze, because these various websites should browse information quickly and conveniently. These problems are mainly in three aspects. First, in the dense small print on the homepage of the website, when we look for the information we need, the positions of different websites are very different, just like a maze. Second, the same information content has different column names on different websites. Third, the information content of the same column name on different websites is inconsistent, and these problems need to be standardized urgently.

The construction and development of government websites in China has a history of more than ten years, initially forming the construction pattern of government websites, which indicates that the construction of government portals has begun to take shape. From the website of the central government to the websites of governments at all levels, we have accumulated a lot of experience and formed more and more knowledge. We should start to implement more effective construction of government websites and standardization of government portals. It is suggested that the competent department of the central government should take the lead in organizing experienced comrades of government portals at all levels to study the standardization model of government portals at all levels and make standardized styles of government portals at all levels for popularization and use. Referring to the website construction, management and operation mode of the Ministry of Commerce, a number of government websites dominated by government portals have been established. In particular, the government portals at the city and county levels are the main windows for serving the people, so it is necessary to promote this model website so that the public can easily find relevant information when browsing the government portals in different cities. Therefore, the homepage of the website should be designed with about two-thirds of the space, such as unified column name, column content requirements and the location of the website where the column is located. The format of each page should also be unified and standardized, especially the format design of page header and footer, but the background and website logo can be customized according to local characteristics. About one-third of the layout is used for local characteristic design to reflect the characteristics of different cities. Necessary mandatory provisions should also be made in the sub-columns within the column, and at the same time, some characteristic sub-columns can be added according to local characteristics to realize the harmony and unity of personality of government portals at the same level. In addition, there are still confusions in website names and domain names, which need to be standardized urgently. I think it's time to standardize government portals. In this way, those areas that lack technical talents and funds can also have a good website planning and design as technical support. As for the richness of information, the timeliness of updating and the quality of service, it depends on the importance attached by local party and government leaders. Therefore, this measure can promote the construction and development of government portals in relatively backward areas.

Third, we should evaluate the government work itself by evaluating the government portal website.

The annual assessment of government portals should reflect the assessment of the quality and level of local government's own online service for the people through the assessment of government portals, rather than the assessment of government portals themselves. The government portal itself does not generate information, can't answer the questions and complaints of netizens, and can't adopt the suggestions and opinions of netizens. Instead, various government departments publish information, do things online and interact with netizens through the platform of government portal website, so as to achieve the purpose of serving the people online. In essence, the assessment of the higher-level government to the lower-level government portal is the assessment of the lower-level government through the government portal, and the assessment of the government portal at the same level is essentially the performance assessment of all functional departments on the government portal.

The solution of the above problems can make the government portal website and its management and operation departments achieve the purposes of consistent relationship, standardized standards and targeted assessment, which is conducive to the healthy development of e-government, especially the government portal website, and to the transformation of the government portal website from an all-round control government to a service-oriented government, so that ordinary people can really deal with the government through the network.

Author: Deputy Director of Qiqihar Information Center, Qin Dynasty

order

In order to fully grasp the development of government portals at all levels in China, sum up problems in time, provide reference for formulating policies and measures, and further promote the development of e-government, the State Council Information Office specially entrusted CCID Consulting Co., Ltd. of China Electronic Information Industry Development Research Institute to set up a working group (Guo Xin Office Letter [2003] 122) to study and formulate survey indicators and conduct annual surveys.

On April 8, 2004, the State Council Press Office organized personnel and experts from relevant units to hold a symposium on "2003 China Government Portal Development Survey" at Beijing New Century Hotel. Director Zhao of the Promotion and Application Group of the State Council Press Office presided over the forum, and Deputy General Manager Sun Guofeng of CCID Consulting Information Consulting Division introduced the investigation process and results. Comrades from 13 ministries and commissions such as the Secretariat of the Central Office, the General Office of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee, the General Office of the Central Organization Committee, the Secretariat of the State Council Office, the General Office of the National Development and Reform Commission, the General Office of the Ministry of Supervision, the General Office of the Ministry of Finance, and the General Office of the Ministry of Personnel, the General Office of the Ministry of Information Industry, the General Office of the Ministry of Commerce, the General Office of the Ministry of Culture, the Office of the State Food and Drug Administration of the United States, and the Secretariat of the the State Council Press Office respectively issued relevant questions.

Some survey results are selected, hoping to attract the attention of relevant government departments and get suggestions from all walks of life to improve the future survey work.

Three indicators constitute the evaluation system of Chinese government portal websites.

To measure the development level of government portal websites, we must always focus on the development requirements of e-government and conform to the performance characteristics of the websites themselves. Based on this, CCID Consulting believes that the index system of government portals must follow the following five basic principles:

1. boot. The survey indicators and results can play a positive and correct guiding role in the development of government websites at all levels.

2. Objectivity. The survey indicators are mainly objective indicators (try to avoid subjective indicators), and the important attributes of the website can be objectively reflected through webpage analysis.

3. Comparability. The setting of indicators must be combined with the overall development level of Chinese government websites, and the indicators should not be too high. At the same time, the level differences between websites must be clearly distinguished so that different websites can be compared with each other.

4. operability. Try to make the indicators easy to understand, the score objective, the data easy to count and the calculation convenient and fast.

5. Extensibility. With the different development stages of government websites, the survey index system must be adjusted in time.

Judging from the development path of e-government in the world, its main content construction basically follows the process from information release to interactive service. In addition to website content, functional structure is the guarantee for the realization of portal website content. Therefore, the index system of this government portal website consists of three parts: government information disclosure, government interactive service and website functional structure.

According to the different characteristics of Ministry websites and local websites, the index system is slightly different. The indicator system of ministries' websites includes 35 specific indicators, including information disclosure indicator 19, interactive service indicator 7 and functional structure indicator 9. The indicator system of local websites includes 40 specific indicators, including information disclosure indicator 24, interactive service indicator 7 and functional structure indicator 9, as shown in figure 1.

Figure 1 China government portal website evaluation index system

This survey adopts the method of "index" to measure the comprehensive development level of the website and the construction level of a certain content or function. The exponential range is 0- 1, the theoretical minimum value is 0, and the maximum value is 1.

The overall development of China government portal website

The survey targets include ministries and institutions directly under the State Council (hereinafter referred to as "ministries") and government portals at provincial, prefectural and county levels (hereinafter referred to as "localities"). During the investigation, all ministries and their affiliated institutions (77 * * *), government portals at provincial level (365,438+0) and prefecture level (329 * * *) were investigated, and government portals at county level (465,438+04) were sampled.

The survey results show that, on the whole, China's government portals are still in the initial stage of development, which is reflected in the index with a score below 0.5. Compared with provincial, prefectural and county websites, the development of provincial government portals is relatively good; The development of county-level government portals is relatively backward. As for the ministries' portals, their development is not optimistic, and the overall situation is slightly worse than that of provincial websites. See the figure below for specific index scores.

Figure 2 Comparison of comprehensive development index of government portals at all levels in China.

The survey results show that the top 10 ministries' portals are Ministry of Commerce, State Food and Drug Administration, National Audit Office, Forestry Bureau, Grain Bureau, State Taxation Administration of The People's Republic of China, Ministry of Health, State Administration of Foreign Exchange, state administration of work safety and State Environmental Protection Administration. The top 10 portals of provinces and cities in China are Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Hebei, Guangdong, Anhui, Jiangxi, Xinjiang, Shaanxi and Fujian. The top 10 government portals in China are Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Zhuhai, Qingdao, Wuhan, Dalian, Huangshi, Suzhou and Shantou.

The Development of China Government Portal Website "Information Openness"

"Information disclosure" is the foundation of government portal website. The survey results show that, except for county-level websites, the "information disclosure" of provincial, prefecture-level and ministerial-level websites in China has developed obviously, reaching a medium level in terms of index. However, county-level websites are still in their infancy, and the specific index is shown in the following figure.

Fig. 3 Development of China government portal "Information Disclosure"

From the release of specific information content of websites, among the government portals at ministerial level, the number of websites providing three types of information is the largest, with the proportion of websites being 90.02%, 88.55% and 88.55% respectively. Less information was released, including "bidding information", "organization setting" and "introduction of directly affiliated units", and the websites accounted for 54.60%, 48.70% and 45.75% respectively.

Among the provincial government portals, the number of websites providing three types of information, namely, local profile, policies and regulations, and institutional settings, is the largest, and the proportion of websites is 100.00%, 92.59%, and 88.89% in turn. Less information is published in "service time and place", "service guide" and "dynamic news", and the proportion of websites is 77.78%, 62.96%, 5 1.85% in turn.

Among the portal websites of prefecture-level governments, the number of websites providing three types of information is the largest, and the proportion of websites is 100.00%, 100.00% and 96.82% respectively. Less information is released: "dynamic news", "leadership division" and "service time and place", and the websites account for 70.49%, 6 1. 17% and 49.42% respectively.

Among the portal websites of county government, the number of websites providing three kinds of information is the largest, accounting for 94.02%, 73.37% and 67.93% respectively. Less information was published in "Division of Leadership", "Work Guide" and "Service Time and Place", and the websites accounted for 47.28%, 36.96% and 15.76% respectively.

The Development of "Interactive Service" of China Government Portal

Interactive service is the core of government portal website. The survey results show that the interactive services of government portals at all levels in China are generally unsatisfactory. County-level government portals have basically not started, and provincial, prefectural and ministerial government portals have just taken a small step, with indexes below 0.3. Specific indicators are shown in the figure below.

Figure 4. The development of "interactive service" of China government portal.

Judging from the release of specific information content of websites, among ministerial government portals, the number of websites providing "public opinion survey" and "complaints and reports" is the largest, accounting for 38.37% and 30.99% respectively; Less services are "application approval" and "government response", accounting for 13.28% of websites.

Among the provincial government portals, the number of websites providing "complaint reporting" and "form downloading" is the largest, accounting for 77.78% and 37.04% respectively. The services that provide less are "government response" and "online consultation", and the proportion of websites is 7.4 1% and 3.70% respectively.

Among the portal websites of local governments, the number of websites providing "complaints and reports" and "public opinion surveys" is the largest, accounting for 89.94%, 31.19% in turn; The services that provide less are "government response" and "online consultation", and the proportion of websites is 4.60% and 2.03% respectively.

Among the portal websites of county government, the number of websites providing "complaints and reports" and "public opinion surveys" is the largest, accounting for 28.80% and 7.6 1% respectively. Less services are "form download" and "application for approval", and the websites account for 1.09% and 0% respectively.

The Development of "Functional Structure" of China Government Portal Website

"Functional structure" is the guarantee of government portal website. The survey results show that the "functional structure" of Chinese government portal websites is better than "information disclosure" and "interactive service" on the whole. From the functional structure of provincial, prefecture-level, county-level and ministerial-level government portals, the overall development of county-level government websites is poor, and its index score is less than 0.2. The specific score is shown in the figure below.

Figure 5 "Functional Structure" Development of China Government Portal

The survey results show that the proportion of websites with "reasonable content level" in the functional structure construction of ministerial government portals is 90.02%, and the development trend is good; Only 2.95% websites offer help.

In the functional structure construction of provincial government portal websites, the proportion of websites with "reasonable content level" and "content tips" is100.00%; The percentage of websites offering help is 0%.

In terms of functional structure construction, the proportion of websites with reasonable content levels, content tips and related links is100.00%; The proportion of websites offering help is 0.8 1%.

In terms of the functional structure construction of county-level government portal websites, the proportion of websites with reasonable content level is 95.65%; The percentage of websites offering help is 0%.

This is the first time that China has conducted a comprehensive survey of government portals at all levels. The purpose of index setting is to understand the systematicness of website content construction. Future surveys will further explore the depth and quality evaluation of information and service content on the basis of existing research results. Due to the tight investigation time, heavy workload and lack of experience, there are still many shortcomings in this investigation. It is believed that with the continuous improvement of the survey index system and survey methods, the survey results on the China government portal will provide more valuable reference for the China government to formulate relevant policies.