A survey of Web-based community information systems.

Abstract

Community information systems provide a computer-based mechanism for a community to disseminate information and facilitate communication. The development of the Internet and World Wide Web has enabled the deployment of community information systems utilizing these technologies. This project surveyed those efforts with two goals. The first goal was to compare the demographics of cities, whether a city had a web site, and the relative quality of a city's web site. The second goal was to identify high quality, model sites that could be used as templates for other communities to build their own web-based community information system. To accomplish these goals, 539 cities from across the U.S. were identified. Of these, the 309 with official city web sites were surveyed using a 28-question instrument that measured the content and design of the site. The resulting analysis shows that while some demographic variables do have a significant correlation with the existence and quality of a web site, none of these variables function as a very strong predictor. This finding substantiates the need for the development of a model for web-based community information systems that can be easily adopted and utilized by communities to support the development of more effective sites.