Governmental Websites Quality in Romanian Cities: Usability, Accessibility, and the Influence of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The website of any governmental institution is the main channel through which digital public services, both informational and transactional, are offered. This became even more relevant during pandemic times, when face-to-face interaction was severely curtailed in most European countries. This happened in Romania also, and our aim with this research (re­peated once every two years from now on) is to eval­uate the quality of the websites offered by Romanian city halls in large and medium-sized cities.Most of the services offered by the government to citizens and companies are, in Romania, provided at the local level by city halls. Access to these services can be helped or hampered by the site ergonomics, loading speed or its overall quality. We are also try­ing to ascertain if other factors (the amount of col­lected taxes, the size of the city, the political party of the mayor, etc.) has any influence on the quality of the official site. Any such correlations could inform the necessary decisions that aim to improve the websites and, ultimately, the success of digital pub­lic services (both transactional and informational) that use it as a delivery channel.

Keywords

• website analysis
• city halls
• digitalization
• digital public services
• romania.