by Darrell M. West, Center for Public Policy, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 02912-1977

(401) 863-1163

September, 2002

Executive Summary

A Note on Methodology

Overview of City E-Government

Online Information

Services Provided

Services by Top Cities

Privacy and Security

Security by Top Cities

Privacy by Top Cities

Disability Access

Foreign Language Access

Ads, User Fees, and Premium Fees

Restricted Areas

Public Outreach

Email Responsiveness

Top E-Government Cities

Differences by Branch of Government

Conclusions

Appendix

Table A-1 Overall City E-Government Ratings, 2001 and 2002

Table A-2 Individual City Profiles for Selected Features, 2002

Table A-3 Individual City Profiles for Selected Features, 2002

Table A-4 Individual City Profiles for Selected Features, 2002

Table A-5 Best Practices in Top Cities, 2002

This report presents the second annual update on urban e-government in the United States. E-government refers to the delivery of information and services online through the Internet. Many city governmental units have placed a wide range of materials on the web from publications to databases. Using a detailed analysis of 1,567 city government websites in the 70 largest metropolitan areas, we measure the information and services that are online, chart the variations that exist across cities, and discuss how urban e-government can be improved.

In general, we found that cities have made major strides toward placing information and services online. There has been a substantial increase in the number of city sites that have online services, disability access, and foreign language translation. Urban officials also have made strides in figuring out how to incorporate technology such as webcams, geographic information systems, and interactive features into their websites. However, at the same time, there is growing reliance on user fees and premium service areas that limits access. Some cities also are creating "restricted areas" requiring user names and registration for accessibility. These features need to be assessed very carefully in order to determine how they will affect the ability of ordinary people to access electronic government.

In our analysis of websites, we looked for material that would aid an average citizen or business person logging onto a governmental site. This included contact information that would enable a citizen or business person to find out who to call or write at an agency to resolve a problem, material on information, services, and databases, features that would facilitate e-government access by special populations such as the disabled and non-native language speakers, interactive features that would facilitate outreach to the public, and visible statements that would reassure citizens worried about privacy and security over the Internet.

The data for our analysis consisted of 1,567 city government websites for the 70 largest cities in America. The list of cities assessed was based on the most populous metropolitan areas as assessed by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2000. Among the sites analyzed in each city were those of executive offices (such as a mayor or city manager), legislative offices (such as city councils), and major agencies serving crucial functions of government, such as health, human services, taxation, education, economic development, administration, police, fire, transportation, tourism, and business regulation. We looked at an average of 22 websites per city. The analysis was undertaken during June and July, 2002 at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Tabulation for this project was completed by Dylan Brown and Julie Petralia.

Websites were evaluated for the presence of various features dealing with information availability, service delivery, and public access. Features assessed included type of site, name of city, branch of the world, office phone number, office address, online publications, online database, external links to non-governmental sites, audio clips, video clips, non-native languages or foreign language translation, commercial advertising, user payments or fees, premium fees, restricted areas, various types of disability access, various measures of privacy policy, security features, presence of online services, number of different services, links to a government services portal, digital signatures, credit card payments, email address, search capability, comment form or chat-room, broadcast of events, automatic email updates, and personalization of website.

For e-government service delivery, we looked at the number and type of online services offered. Features were defined as services only if the entire transaction could occur online. If a citizen had to print out a form and then mail it back to the agency to obtain the service, we did not count that as a service which could be fully executed online. Searchable databases counted as services only if they involved accessing information that resulted in a specific government service response. The remainder of this report outlines the detailed results that came out of this research.

We also undertook an email responsiveness test in order to determine the extent to which city agencies would respond to a simple request for information. We sent an email to the human services department (or its equivalent) in each city. The message was short, asking the question, "I would like to know what hours your agency is open during the week. Thanks for your help." Email responses from agencies were recorded based on whether the office responded and how long it took to respond in days.

In general, the last year has seen a flourishing of e-government activity at the urban level. More and more cities are putting services online, providing disability access, and making publications and data bases available for online viewing. There also has been improved service to people with special needs. For example, the Houston Aging Department uses larger fonts (size 13.5) on its site compared to that of other government websites in the city (size 10). This helps older Americans with declining eyesight to be able to read issues related to aging. Syracuse has a "How Do I?" section that instructs visitors on how to do a variety of online things, such as renewing licenses to obtaining tax forms.

A number of cities are making progress at using the power of technology to deal with urban issues that frustrate ordinary people. For example, cities such as San Jose and Seattle are using live webcams at key intersections so that visitors can check for themselves how crowded certain highways are at various points during the day. Other places such as Louisville and Detroit are using geographic information system maps that are color coded to show the average traffic speed along various parts of major highways. These e-government features help people use the Internet to make decisions on what are the best routes to travel around the city. However, some sites (such as Greensboro, North Carolina) take new technology to an annoying degree and program pop-up screens that appear every time you enter the portal page. Although they advertise upcoming events or special messages from the city (such as the need to conserve water), they require visitors to close them or sit through a lengthy presentation before being able to see the entire website.

Reflecting the status of many cities as tourist destinations, a number of websites offer virtual tours of parks, major buildings, gardens, and town halls so that people can get a 360 degree panoramic view of those areas. This allows potential visitors to see whether they would be interested in visiting those attractions. Examples of sites doing this include the Oakland Fire Department as well as the Seattle, Tacoma, and Miami portals.

In the interest of promoting responsiveness and accountability, Denver city government has a blank email form on its portal site with a pull-down screen that allows citizens to drag down the names of various public officials in that area for email contact. This makes it easier for citizens to figure out which government person they should contact for various types of issues.

However, as we discuss in this report, there has been an increase in the percentage of sites relying on user fees and premium fees. This risks the creation of a "two-class" e-government society where those who can afford online services pay to access them, while other citizens are not able to take advantage of premium features. In addition, some city government sites have created "restricted areas" requiring user names and passwords in order to be able to access material in that area. There needs to be careful thought about the broader ramifications of each of these developments for the future of e-government.

In looking at specific features of government websites, we found that contact information is quite prevalent. The vast majority of sites provide their department's telephone number (97 percent) and mailing address (95 percent). These are materials that would help an ordinary citizen needing to contact a government agency reach that office. In terms of the content of online material, many agencies have made extensive progress at placing information online for public access. Ninety-three percent (up from 64 percent in 2001) of government websites around the country offered publications that a citizen could access, and 77 percent provided databases, up from 38 percent last year. Ninety-eight percent had links to other sites where a citizen could turn for additional information, which was higher than the previous year.

Most public sector websites do not incorporate audio clips or video clips on their official sites. Despite the fact that these are becoming much more common features of e-commerce and private sector enterprise, six percent of government websites provided audio clips and 16 percent had video clips. A common type of audio or video clip was a greeting or speech by the mayor.

Fully executable, online service delivery benefits both government and its constituents. In the long run, such services have the potential to lower the costs of service delivery and make services more widely accessible to the general public, because they no longer have to visit, write, or call an agency in order to execute a specific service. There has been a substantial increase in city sites having fully executable, online services. Of the websites examined around the country, 49 percent offered some service, up from 13 percent last year. Of this group, 12 percent offer one service, 4 percent have two services, 2 percent offer three services, and 31 percent have four or more services.

The most frequent services found online included requesting services, requesting information, paying traffic tickets, and filing complaints.

One feature that has aided the development of online services has been the ability to use credit cards and digital signatures on financial transactions. Twenty-five percent of city government websites are able to process credit card payments, which is up from 4 percent last year. Only one percent, though, allow digital signatures for financial transactions, about the same as last year.

Of the 70 cities analyzed, there is wide variance in the percentage of government sites with online services. San Diego and Tampa are first, with 100 percent of their websites providing some type of service, followed by Denver (97 percent), San Antonio (96 percent), Seattle (96 percent), and San Francisco (96 percent).

Public opinion surveys place privacy and security at the top of the list of citizen concerns about e-government. Having visible statements outlining what the site is doing on privacy and security are valuable assets for reassuring a fearful population and encouraging citizens to make use of e-government services and information. There has been an increase in the percentage of city e-government sites that offer policy statements dealing with these topics. For example, 38 percent post some form of privacy statement on their site, up from 14 percent last year. Twenty-five percent have a security statement, up from 8 percent in 2001.

We also assessed the quality of privacy and security statements. In looking at the content of privacy policies, 29 percent prohibited the commercial marketing of visitor information, 5 percent prohibit the creation of cookies or individual profiles of visitors, 30 percent prohibit sharing personal information without the prior consent of the user, and 27 percent share information with law enforcement authorities. On security statements, 6 percent indicated they use computer software to monitor network traffic.

Some cities, such as Indianapolis, have a privacy policy on the portal page that "informs you about the types of information the city of Indianapolis and Marion County gathers online when you visit Indy.gov or any associated web sites." However, no other agency link for that locale shows the privacy policy. This means if visitors enter an agency website directly rather than going through the portal, they will not see a privacy policy.

There are wide variations across cities in the percentage of websites showing a security policy. Albany, Austin, and Memphis were the places most likely to show a visible security policy, with 100 percent of their sites including a statement. They were followed by Richmond (96 percent), Dallas (95 percent), Albuquerque (95 percent), and Minneapolis (95 percent).

Similar to the security area, there are widespread variations across cities in providing privacy policies on their websites. The cities with the highest percentage of websites offering a visible privacy policy were Albany, Austin, Buffalo, Memphis, Phoenix, Richmond, and Virginia Beach (100 percent), followed by Denver (97 percent), Dallas (95 percent), Albuquerque (95 percent), and Minneapolis (95 percent).

There has been a dramatic increase in disability access. Whereas last year, 11 percent of government websites had some form of access, this year 82 percent did. To be recorded as accessible to the disabled, the site had to display any one of the following features that would be helpful to the hearing or visually impaired. For example, TTY (Text Telephone) or TDD (Telephonic Device for the Deaf) phone numbers allow hearing-impaired individuals to contact the agency by phone. Second, the site could be "Bobby Approved," meaning that the site has been deemed disability-accessible by a non-profit group that rates Internet web sites for such accessibility (http://www.cast.org/bobby/). Third, the site could have web accessibility features consistent with standards mandated by groups such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) or local legislative acts. Finally, if the site provided text labels for graphics or text versions of the website, it was counting as having some degree of accessibility.

In looking at particular kinds of disability accessibility, there were variations in how cities provided access. Fourteen percent provided TTY/TDD phone lines, 2 percent were Bobby approved, 1 percent met the standards of the World Wide Web consortium or local legislative acts, and 79 percent had text versions or text labels for graphics.

Seventeen percent of city government websites have foreign language features that allow access to non-native speaking individuals (although this is up from 7 percent last year). By foreign language feature, we mean any accommodation to the non-native speakers, such as text translation into a different language. The cities having the highest proportion of websites with foreign language access included Denver (97 percent of its sites), Dallas (95 percent), Cleveland (91 percent), Cincinnati (74 percent), and Hartford (70 percent).

Using a company called WorldLingo, the Dayton portal has eight different languages (Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and French) accessible through its site. Cincinnati also offered six languages (French, German, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and Russian) through its portal site as well as through several of its specific agencies and departments. The Albuquerque site had translations and the contact name in various departments of staff members who spoke Spanish.

Overall, use of ads to finance government websites is not very prevalent. Only 2 percent of sites (up from 1 percent last year) had commercial advertisements on their sites, meaning non-governmental corporate and group sponsorships. In general, tourism and transit authority sites were most likely to have ads. For example, these websites had banners or "fly-by" ads for hotels, travel agents, or special travel packages. When defining an advertisement, we eliminated computer software available for free download (such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, Netscape Navigator, and Microsoft Internet Explorer) since they are necessary for viewing or accessing particular products or publications. Links to commercial products or services available for a fee included as advertisements as were banner, pop-up, and fly-by advertisements.

Cities that had ads on their websites included the Tacoma Parks website (ads for Coke and ATT Broadband as part of its Summer Sounds Concert 2002), the Phoenix portal (an ATT ad for its Education Showcase online form), the Phoenix Human Services page (ads for Yahoo mail and Yahoo maps), San Diego Parks and Recreation (ads for Pepsi and Ralphs for Partners in Play), Columbus portal (an ad for a Channel 10 sponsored event Commit to be Fit), Philadelphia portal (a Citizens Bank ad for Philadelphia Marathon 2002), Virginia Beach portal (ads for golf courses, business counseling, and children's summer programs), Providence portal (ads for a clothing store and weather.com), and New Orleans portal (an ad for weather.com).

There has been a growth of reliance on user fees. Eleven percent of city e-government sites had user fees. These are transaction fees over the actual cost of the government service. This contrasts with the fact that no sites had user fees in 2001. Examples of sites that relied on user fees include the Indianapolis City website (through its premium site CivicNet, with user fees of $5/case for a Civil Case Summary, $2/license for a marriage license, and $3/application for plumbing permits"), the Houston website (an online ticket payment service that charges a $5 convenience fee per ticket), the San Francisco site (ordering Birth and Death certificates for a $5 convenience fee and an online parking ticket payment system with a convenience fee of $2.75 per citation paid"), Baltimore city website (which uses an online company called Official Payment Corp. to process online miscellaneous, parking fines/red light citations, personal property tax, and real property taxes), the San Antonio City website (tickets for the 2003 Division I Men's Championship South Regional could be purchased online for $4/ticket), the Orlando city website (uses a site called remit-online for online parking ticket payments and charges a $2 convenience fee for each ticket), the Columbus City website (allows for utility bill payment online at a charge of $2 or 2%, whichever is greater), the St. Louis City website (uses Official Payment Corp. to process personal property and real estate taxes online for a convenience charge), Tampa (which offers online ticket payment for $1.50 to $5), the Richmond portal, finance, and utilities pages (a fee to pay utilities, taxes, and parking tickets online for $2 to $3), Jacksonville portal, courts, and taxation (a fee to pay parking tickets and taxes online run by Official Payments Corp.), Salt Lake City environment, utility, and transportation (a user fee to pay parking tickets and water bills online), Austin Human Service ($9 to $11 for Birth and Death Certificates run via Vital Check), Buffalo (pay parking tickets online for a users fee; run via VeriSign), Rochester ($3 user fee for paying parking ticket and $1 for utilities), Memphis (pay taxes online through Official Payments Corporation), and Raleigh (pay parking tickets online through VeriSign).

Two percent of city government sites had premium fees in order to enter particular sections of the website. This included the Cincinnati City website (linked to a $30 premium bid site called BidWire run by Demandstar; companies also can "Target government opportunities specifically to your business," "view new bids AND past bids to help you compete," "Download, print, or request bid documents be mailed directly to you," and "View blueprints online or download blueprints"), and the Kansas City website (access to the premium BidWire for local companies).

In addition, the Indianapolis City website had an extensive premium area called the CivicNet which required a $50/year fee to be accessed. There also were other fees for most services. For example, the user had to pay $5/case for a "Civil Case Summary," $2/license for a marriage license, and $3/application for plumbing permits. There also was a user fee to undertake a database search in addition to the $50/year fee. Users were charged to do a criminal justice search, which "Identifies an individual who has been accused of a criminal offense within the Marion County Circuit Court System. Information available from 1988-present." For the annual subscription, CivicNet furthermore provides individual passwords for up to 10 people in the organization (which would access all online services at the site), toll-free technical support hotline, and detailed management reports regarding account usage. Finally, for a $75 annual subscription fee, citizens could access all these CivicNet services plus all the premium services offered by Access Indiana for the state of Indiana. This was the only city/state premium area combination that we found anywhere around the country.

Eight percent of city government websites had restricted areas requiring user names and passwords to access. For example, sites with restricted areas included the Houston site (where there is a restricted area for people who sign up for the Department of Public Works & Engineering, and then they can take part in the "street cut permit system."), Atlanta Police Department website (a restricted area for officers and retired officers), Seattle Community College (an online report tool for teachers to access who is taking their class; restricted to teachers only), the Minneapolis Human Resources website (a restricted area for employment information and enrollment forms that only city employees can access), the San Diego Unified School District (a restricted job application area), the San Diego Community College (a restricted area for online applications), the Los Rios Community College (services restricted to students with student ID numbers), the Milwaukee Municipal Court website (a restricted case information area for "authorized users") Milwaukee Neighborhood Services site (a restricted are for the internal DNS phone list), the San Antonio City website (a restricted area for telecommuting support), the Tidewater Community College website (a restricted area for student email accounts), the Pittsburgh City website (a restricted "Career Link" area for board members and staff"), the School District of Hillsborough County in Tampa (an area called "IDEAS" that was restricted), Long Beach School Department (restricted area for students and teachers), El Paso Tax Office (restricted area for tax information), Greenville Motor Vehicles, Treasurer, and Planning (restricted areas for authorized users), Louisville Education (job search and application requires social security number and password registration), Louisville Revenue and Taxes (requires account and password to enter), Jacksonville library and utility page (require name and pin number to access certain information), Nashville Finance page (requires a name and password in order to make a bid), Salt Lake City (business page requires a business license identification number to access services, the purchasing department requires a password for services, and the education page requires a password to access the online library), and Charlotte Sheriff's page (requires a login and password to research certain documents).

E-government offers the potential to bring citizens closer to their governments. Email is an interactive feature that allows ordinary citizens to pose questions of government officials or request information or services. In our study, we found that 74 percent of government websites offered email contact material so that a visitor could email a person in a particular department other than the Webmaster.

While email is certainly the easiest method of contact, there are other methods that government websites can employ to facilitate public feedback. These include areas to post comments (other than through email), the use of message boards, and chat rooms, which appeared on 36 percent of sites. Websites using these features allow citizens and department members alike to read and respond to others' comments regarding issues facing the department.

Sixty-nine percent of the sites we examined had the ability to search the particular website. This is a feature that is helpful to citizens because it allows them to find the specific information they want. Nine percent of sites offer live broadcasts of important speeches or events ranging from live coverage of the government hearings and broadcasts of public speeches to weekly Internet radio shows featuring various department officials. Thirteen percent of government websites allow citizens to register to receive updates regarding specific issues. With this feature, web visitors can input their email addresses, street addresses, or telephone numbers to receive information about a particular subject as new information becomes available. The information can be in the form of alerts notifying citizens whenever a particular portion of the website is updated. Three percent of websites allowed the users to personalize the site to their particular interests.

It is useful to have email contact information on government websites, but there needs to be staff members who actually read and respond to citizen requests for information. To test agency responsiveness, we sent sample email messages to human service departments in the various cities asking for information on when their government office was open. We monitored responses to see whether anyone responded and how long it took in days.

In general, responsiveness was not very good. Sixty-two percent of agencies responded, while 38 percent did not. Of those which did respond, most did so in one or two days. This clearly is an area where government agencies need to work in order to increase responsiveness to citizen requests.

In order to see how the 70 cities ranked overall, we created a 0 to 100 point e-government index and applied it to each city's websites based on the availability of contact information, publications, databases, portals, and number of online services. Four points were awarded to each website for the presence of each of the following 24 features: phone contact information, addresses, publications, databases, links to other sites, audio clips, video clips, foreign language access, not having ads, not having user fees, not having premium fees, not having restricted areas, disability access, having privacy policies, security policies, allowing digital signatures on transactions, an option to pay via credit cards, email contact information, search capabilities, having a link to a portal, areas to post comments, broadcasts of events, option for email updates, and personalization. These features provided a maximum of 96 points for particular websites.

Each site then qualified for a bonus of four points based on the number of online services executable on that site (1 point for one service, two points for two services, three points for three services, and four points for four or more services). The e-government index therefore ran along a scale from 0 (having none of these features and no online services) to 100 (having all 24 features plus at least four online services). This total for each website was averaged across all of a specific city's websites to produce a 0 to 100 overall rating for that urban area.

The top city in our ranking is Minneapolis at 89.5 percent. This means that every website we analyzed for that city has nearly 90 percent of the features important for information availability, citizen access, portal access, and service delivery. Other cities which score well on e-government include Seattle (85.9 percent), Denver (85.3 percent), San Diego (79.3 percent), Boston (77.6 percent), Kansas City (75 percent), Dallas (74.6 percent), Washington, D.C. (74.3 percent), Houston (73.8 percent), and Tampa (72.9 percent). Most cities showed improvement in their score compared to the 2001 results. The Appendix lists each city's ranking for 2001 and 2002.

The lowest ranked cities in our study included New Orleans (44.8 percent), Norfolk (45 percent), Raleigh (45 percent), and Detroit (46.4 percent).

There are some differences in e-government by branch of government. In general, portal sites that serve as the gateway to many city government websites had more publications, links to external sites, foreign language translation, online services, electronic updates, and credit card payment options than executive, legislative, or judicial sites.

To summarize, we find that there has been considerable improvement over last year in the amount of online services, disability access, and giving citizens access to online publications and data bases. These improvements show that when mayors and city councils place a priority on introducing technology into government, rapid progress can be made.

However, the growth in the use of user fees and premium service areas limits the ability of all citizens to access these features. While some are able to pay the $50 to $75 charge required to access premium areas, not all can do so. The use of these revenue-generating areas runs the risk of creating a "two-class" society of information haves and have-nots. Government officials must think carefully about the ramifications of this reliance on for-fee services.

Some cities have been forced to curtail e-government services due to budgetary problems. For example, Atlanta stopped its City Beat newsletter because of "the critical financial issues facing" the city (according to its website). These types of financial problems are becoming more of a problem for the expansion of urban e-government across the country.

In addition, more and more cities are building "restricted access" areas of their websites that require user names and passwords to enter. While some of these restrictions are valid based on the privacy of employee records, officials must be careful not to limit information in areas where there is a legitimate public right to know. In the case of the latter, limited access prevents technology from achieving its full promise in an open society.

City governments need to figure out how to take advantage of features that enhance public accountability. Simple tools such as website search engines are important because such technologies give citizens the power to find the information they want on a particular site. Right now, only two-thirds of government websites are searchable, which limits the ability of ordinary citizens to find information that is relevant to them.

The same logic applies in regard to features that allow citizens to post comments or otherwise provide feedback about a government agency. Citizens bring diverse perspectives and experiences to e-government, and agencies benefit from citizen suggestions, complaints, and feedback. Even a simple feature such as a comment form empowers citizens and gives them an opportunity to voice their opinion about city government services they would like to see. Given the range of services cities deal with, such as garbage collection, police and fire, streets, potholes, and rodent control, it would be especially valuable for city government websites to employ features that facilitate citizen feedback and enhance governmental accountability.

Note: The following table shows the percentage of websites in each city that has the particular feature, such as contact information, publications, databases, links, and foreign language translation.

Note: The following table shows the percentage of websites in each city that has the particular feature, such as ads, premium fees, restricted areas, user fees, online services, and links to a portal.

Note: The following table shows the percentage of websites in each city that has the particular feature, such as digital signatures, credit card capabilities, privacy statements, security statements, disability access, and comment sections.

1) Minneapolis: http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/

The city of Minneapolis scored highly on the e-government index because of the availability of contact information, publications, databases, and a number of online services. As seen on the portal page above, the city portal page is clear, easy to navigate, and provides citizens with a variety of services and information. Some features unique to the Minneapolis page were the link for e-subscription updates, and the webcam of live city government. In addition, the page is easy to follow and find what one is looking for because of the "How do I" section, the search option, the list of city services and their contact information, as well as the separation of business, leisure, community, and city hall services. The city of Minneapolis has privacy and security policies, foreign language translation, and viewing options for the disabled. The website does not have restrictions, premium fees, or advertisements. The site allows credit card transactions, and provides opportunities for citizen feedback, and has email updates available. All of these combined factors made Minneapolis the top-ranking city at 89.5%.

2) Seattle: http://www.cityofseattle.net/

The city of Seattle was the second ranked e-government city at 85.9%. The page is easy to navigate and provides citizens with a variety of information and services. As seen on the portal page, Seattle has a large number of services, and contact information, search options, and feedback mechanisms enable citizens to find what they are looking for. The site also offers audio and video clips, privacy and security policies, four foreign language translations and access for the disabled via text only and TTY services. The site does not restrict users or charge premium or user fees. The page separates local citizens, business, and visitors in order to make the site easier to navigate. Also, email updates are available through this site. Overall, there was a lot of information offered to citizens, and it was laid out in a way that was easy to follow.

3) Denver: http://www.denvergov.org/

The city of Denver ranked third in the 2002 e-government city ranking at 85.3%. The site makes contact information, publications, databases, and online services available to users. The portal page is clearly laid out, and in addition to the number of services and the availability of information, the site offers eight foreign language translations. The city has privacy policy and opportunity for feedback, and prohibits advertisements, restrictions, and premium fees. The Denver site is simple to follow because under the heading of information center, the types of services are broken down (elected officials, employment, business, and online services) so it is easy for a citizen to locate what they are looking for. Email updates are available to citizens through this site. All of the factors combined and the number of services available lead to the high ranking in this year's e-government evaluation.

4) San Diego: http://www.sannet.gov/

The city of San Diego was the fourth ranked e-government city at 79.3%. The city scored highly on the e-government index because of the availability of contact information, publications, databases, and a number of online services. San Diego has privacy and security policies, foreign language translation, and viewing options for the disabled. The website does not have restrictions, premium fees, or advertisements. The site allows credit card transactions, and provides opportunities for citizen feedback. As seen on the portal page, there is an extensive amount of information contained on the site and it is well organized, so citizens are able to access and find what services and information they are looking for.

 5) Boston: http://www.cityofboston.gov/

The city of Boston ranked fifth in the 2002 e-government study at 77.6%. The site scored highly on the e-government index because of the availability of contact information, publications, databases, and a number of online services. As seen on the portal page above, the city portal page is clear, easy to navigate, and provides citizens with a variety of services and information. Boston laid out the information in three groups- residents, businesses, and visitors so it was easier for citizens to find what they were looking for. The website is comprehensive and all departments share a similar template. The city of Boston has privacy and security policies and viewing options for the disabled. The website does not have restrictions, premium fees, or advertisements. The site allows credit card transactions, and provides opportunities for citizen feedback. Also, the portal page has the ability to be personalized and updates are available.