Why your mouse hates Govt portals

The information age has dawned not just on netizens hooked to Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia. With every department boasting of a website, even the Indian government has taken to the digital highway with a bang. But there's a slight problem. A study on govt department websites says they are difficult to navigate and have poor design sense, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Sep 14, 2009, 01:33:27 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The information age has dawned not just on netizens hooked to Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia. With every department boasting of a website, even the Indian government has taken to the digital highway with a bang. But there's a slight problem.

A study — Indian Government Online-2009 — carried out by Webchutney, a company that provides consultancy services in portal implementation, has found government websites lacking user-friendly features.

The citizens, who want to access information from government websites, have to bear with, among a host of unfriendly features, the website's poor design.

Of the 35 state and central government websites studied, only 33 per cent had a sitemap to help navigate loads of information on the portal. Only 21 per cent had a section on frequently asked questions (FAQ). The Indian government that hosts close to 6,770 websites is among the largest online information providers in the world.

"The amount of time lost in identifying relevant sources of information due to lack of a site map can negate the very intent of having a website," the study said.

"The cause of the problem was failure of the websites to meet global standards in best practices, design and functionality, leading to citizens facing problems in accessing information."

The Ministry of Labour website fails to meet several design guidelines necessary for any portal to be effective, the study said.

The findings come at a time when the government has decided to invest heavily on e-governance (Rs 2,530 crore in the budget of 2009-10) and provide services in flagship programmes with the help of Information Technology.

"All National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme workers would be able to access their account summary on web through panchayat-level IT centres," said Dr Mihir Shah, member, planning commission rural development in-charge.

Several e-governance initiatives have already been successful. A Commerce ministry project for industry to access government information and on-line teacher's transfer in Kerala is one of them.

"Citizens are increasingly using online media to interact with the government," the study said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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