[LINK] Much More Than WhiteHouse.gov (But Aussies Care More)

[Tom Koltai]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of 
> Marghanita da Cruz
> Sent: Wednesday, 4 May 2011 11:38 AM
> To: Link list
> Subject: [LINK] Much More Than WhiteHouse.gov
> 
> 
> A Useful overview and demonstration of Communication 
> Technologies.
> 
> > Two years ago, the White House launched official profiles 
> on Facebook, 
> > Twitter and MySpace.  Since then we've grown quite a bit, 
> both in terms of the number of connections we've made through 
> these sites, as well as other places on the web that now 
> feature an official White House presence....
> <http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/05/02/much-more-than-whit
ehouse-dot-gov>


Thanks Marghanita, an excellent example of e-Government and the part
that I like is that they request feedback on their methods as well as
the content.

Quote/
"We are always looking for new opportunities to engage the public
online, so if you know of any online communities or social media tools
we should consider, please let us know."
/Quote

They even have an "Office of Public Engagement". [in Oz, I think that
would be Pia...]

We'll see e-Gov works at the next election. 
If Mr. "McDonalds for Lunch" gets in, then e-Government would appear to
be a failure, or too little, too late. On the other hand if President
Obama is returned, I would say that e-government would appear to have
paid off.

In passing, I would make the observation that according to Alexa stats,
[on a Pro-rata basis with AU @ 0.007118182% vs US @ 0.000216612%]
aph.gov.au has a higher [per capita] viewing audience than
whitehouse.gov, however Americans spend 3.2 minutes reading each article
whereas Aussies read faster [;-)] at only 1.6 minutes per article. 

In other words, a higher percentage of Aussies care more about what
their Government is up to but those Americans that are engaged, spend
double the time reading about their Governments initiatives.
- Suggesting, I would hazard a guess that the Whitehouse.gov site is
more engaging at a readability index of around 15... (and with a search
engine that doesn't need a rocket science degree)

[1]
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.whitehouse.gov%2Fadminist
ration%2Feop%2Fope%2Fblog#
[2] http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aph.gov.au#

/body