» Building Government Portals That Work: Guiding Principles from Community Informatics

Umar Ruhi1, Paul Takala2, Brian Detlor1, Maureen Hupfer1

1 DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, Canada
2 Hamilton Public Library

Presented: July 2006.

As governments implement new digital environments as a means of delivering better information services and resources, the challenge of building rich digital spaces that encourage citizen uptake is becoming an increasing challenge. How should governments go about building comprehensive digital environments that are relevant to citizens? This paper addresses this question and examines the City of Hamilton'smunicipal portal, called myhamilton. Promoted as a super site, the community portal not only provides citizens access to key government information services and resources, but importantly also facilitates communication and information sharing among participating members. To understand what governments need to do to secure successful implementation of such digital spaces, myhamilton is used to showcase practical guidelines from key managers involved in the portal project. These guidelines are discussed within the backdrop of best practices from the community informatics literature.

Keywords: electronic government, portals, virtual communities, adoption and use, community informatics.