A content audit of Transport related government websites in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Today there is a new trend to develop websites for government institutes to distribute information to the general public. Besides, the concept of e-government and e- governance have become popular at present. But many cases, the websites have a lot of weaknesses. The aim of the content audit is to perform a qualitative analysis of the content of a website and to find out its relative strengths and weakness. The main objective of the study was to find out whether the government websites provide historical information to the public throughout their websites. On the other hand, weaknesses of the website were identified. In this study, both qualitative and quantitative methodologies were applied. Mainly this is a survey research. By using desk research and website evaluation tools, primary data were collected. WAVE, Google Page Speed and Hubspot Marketing Grader used as evaluation tools for the study. There are 72 ministries under Sri Lankan government and four transport related ministries were used for evaluation. After analyzing the data and evaluating websites, it was realized that most of the transport related government websites have given less priority to publish historical information regarding those institutes. As well as there is a high demand for online services on government websites. But a very few government websites provided online services for the users. Evaluation tools are given low marks for sampled websites. In order to overcome this situation, some major moves are suggested to upgrade the rank of government websites which are, introducing a basic format for a website, following WCAG and proprietary accessibility guidelines, establishing formal web accessibility laws and guidelines, upgrading online services, recruiting a centralized post called web manager for all government institutes.