e democracy has two main goals:
- to renew interest in civic engagement and participation
- to increase transparency in the working of a democratic government
It does this via the electronic medium of the internet and the World Wide Web.
I have looked at three e democracy sites:
I thought these three sites would be interesting because of the following reasons:
- site of a developing nation (India) vs sites of two developed nations (Australia and the UK
- newer site (Australian) vs older site (UK)
- site of a former colony (India) vs site of the former coloniser (England)
e democracy site of the UK
Search engine optimization - None of these search keywords produce this site in the Google search results list:
e governance UK
e democracy UK
e governance Britain
e democracy Britain
Home page - Does not provide an overview of what the concept is, who this site is for and for what purpose
Search - Elaborate
Data organization - Very poor
Level of content - Seems rather technical
Style of writing - Informal, conversational, amateurish, unprofessional effort
Typography - Very poor
For example, drop down menu options are not visible and merge with the background. There is no difference between links and expanding text/ drop down menu items.
Navigation and site map accuracy - Very poor
For example, there is no way to re-trace your steps, unless through the browser.
The Header and Footer don’t appear consistently on every page. Either this should have been used or some other form navigation links in a navigation bar that appears consistently on the right or left of every page, with the entire sitemap and a clear indicator about where the reader is with regard to the entire hierarchy.
Credibility - Dubious
For example, what is the relationship between MySociety and this site? Where does the donation money go?
Links - Largely point internally
Download time - Slow
For example, the MPs and Lords tab take a very long time to load. This is because of the long list and also because of the images.
Multimedia, audio, video - Very few instances
For example, the Debates tab has a few audio/video links. But they don’t seem to work.
Interaction - Minor
For example, the site asks readers to rate the responses, provide feedback.
Recommendations - It seems like the site is created and maintained by a group of British techie volunteers with a keen interest in British politics. I think it is also aimed at similar folks - British techies interested in British politics. If it intends to reach a broader spectrum of British citizens interested in politics, then it needs to have more scope for interaction, community building, and text needs to be better managed and organized.
e democracy site of Australia
Search engine optimization - None of these search keywords produce this site in the Google search results list:
e governance Australia
e democracy Australia
Home page - Fairly well done
For example, it has clearly outlined steps about the various things one can do on the site. However, since no one is required to perform them in that order, they don’t need to be numbered! Numbering automatically presupposes a hierarchy, an order. I would have preferred an introduction to the concept of e democracy and then a list of what you can do with the site.
Data organization - Very well organized into meaningful chunks
Typography - Impressive
Navigation and site map accuracy - Fairly well done
For example, the header and footer repeated across the pages tie them all together, and provide the reader with a sense of the whole, the reader’s relation to that space, and the ability to navigate to other parts.
Credibility - Most credible site of the three
For example, I like the way the Donate section provides some background about the donation aspect.
Links - Both internal and external
For example, each representative has a list of external links that provide more information. The links also have accompanying descriptions that guide the reader about where the link will go.
Download time - Very quick
Interaction - Seems to be well integrated with its target audience. However, the blog link at the bottom takes you to another site. This was confusing. I’m not sure how the two sites are related. They look very different. I think these two sites should be merged for content and presentation.
Recommendations - Although the writing style is very professional, I felt it was an Australian site only while I was on more personalized pages like the Help, About us. Otherwise, it feels like it was written by someone in the UK, for an English audience. It does have a very British feel to it.
e democracy site of India
Search engine optimization - The following keyword gets Google to list this site as second site in the Google search results list:
e governance India
Considering how poorly done this site is, I am surprised how the SEO score is so high and so accurate.
However, the following keyword does not produce this site in the Google search results list:
e democracy India
There appears to be several state-wide e governance initiatives in India! One for each state!
Home page - Does not provide an overview of what the concept is, who this site is for and for what purpose
Data organization - Very poor; too much colour and clutter
For example, the About page contains a list of poorly articulated points, with sloppy formatting. However, the content is very good. It needs to be re-written in web style writing and placed in the home page, with better formatting.
Typography - Very inconsistent. There also seems to be something wrong with the whole site. It appears like a document that was cut and pasted on the web browser. There seems to be a lot of grey background. The Events seem to be copy pasted from some home-made Excel spreadsheet. The tabs/ links on the header seem to dynamically change with every mouse click!
Credibility - None at all. The whole site seems to promote only the man behind it.
For example, the White Papers section seems to promote only the creator of the site. There’s only one white paper by him. How it is connected to the concept of the whole site—I have no idea.
Links - Most links are internal. Most links are broken!
Search, Interaction - Completely missing!
Recommendations - The whole site needs to be re-written, data organized in meaningful chunks, all broken links and images fixed, a forum for interaction needs to be created, more information about constituencies and MPs needs to be provided.
Clearly the winner is the Australian site. Followed by the UK site and then the Indian site.
One issue that I have observed is that there is no single definitive web portal name that pops up when I think of e democracy or e governance in - whether in India, Britain, Australia, or anywhere else in the world. For example, if I think of web mail portals, I can draw up a mental list of - Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL. If I think of ecommerce, I can think of Amazon, ebay. This one-to-one correlation between examples of a portal and the concept of e democracy or e governance, seems to be missing.
This maybe because there is a great deal of ambiguity about what to call this new concept! There is terminology confusion - because of too many terms and not any one definitive term for this new phenomenon. (e democracy, e governance, e participation, etc)
To see this at work - have a look at the See also list in the wikipedia article about e democracy and the See also list in the wikipedia article about e governance page. They are quite different and appear to be mutually exclusive.
