Research On Current Situation Of Public Participation In Local Government Website

The emergence of information technology and its rapid development in China have a profound impact on the country’s political system and public democratic lives. Today, the government website is the main channel for enterprise and public to access to government information and services, and also the main carrier for the interaction between government and public. Promoting the government website building is the focus of work and development direction of current and future E-government. With the development of government website, strengthening government website building should always adhere to the three functional orientations--open government information, online work and public participation, which is the starting point and ending point of current work of all government websites. As to public participation, government enhances communication with the public, solicit public opinions and suggestions, answer complaints from public consultation and subject to public oversight council through website, in order to promote the government to become transparent, service-oriented and democracy type of government.Researches on government website for public participation started late, with less literature and most still stuck in the level of critical shortage. Most research just popularized knowledge or introduction, with little empirical analysis. Based on previous studies, this paper does actual survey on 90 county-level government websites in Zhejiang Province, analyzes public participation through mass primary data, summarizes the existing problems and proposes countermeasures.Firstly, this paper combines current domestic and international e-government with public participation in government sites to form the theoretical research basis. most research introduce that government websites open up communication channels connecting public due to the unique advantage and increase transparency degree of government information to some extent. But the function is still not fully showed, utilization of public participation model is still low and the construction of public participation model is not satisfied.Then, this paper combines theory with practical research.7 public participation channels of 90 government websites in Zhejiang Province have been investigated including the year the first-published letter came from public or public participation theme appeared, the total number of published letters till 2010, the response time government departments gave letter to public, the number of online voting of public participation, information disclosure degree and average page views of public letters.At last, this paper sublimes theory on the basis of empirical analysis. Current government websites is function-unstable, uneven developed and at the stage which transfers to service-oriented from content-driven.This paper is divided into seven chapters. ChapterⅠintroduces the research background, significance, research methodology and the main theoretical background. ChapterⅡconcludes status on public participation section of local government websites in Zhejiang Province from seven modules, based on do nearly three months actual research results. ChapterⅢsummarizes main problems of public participation after full understanding of the status quo. Then, ChapterⅣgoes into the reasons behind those questions and ChapterⅤis related to analysis and discussion. ChapterⅥpromotes a number of useful measures to public participation from three points of view-customer, convenience and communication. ChapterⅦsummarizes the main conclusions of the article.