New Zealand local authority web sites and the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 : an analysis

Abstract

This report is a quantitative analysis of the content of New Zealand local government web sites in relation to Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987. The study has focused on the transmission stage of the information life cycle (Hernon 1995,1996) and its relationship with dissemination of local government official information via council web sites. Local Government in New Zealand comprises of democratically elected regional, city, and district councils. These councils have a legislative obligation under the Act to publish a handbook to official information, to enable official information to be identified and located by the public. The goal of the legislation is to promote policies of open government and citizen participation and consultation with council management. Over 30% of councils in New Zealand have their own web site. Local government is increasingly using the Internet via the World Wide Web as a means to communicate information within and outside their communities. Key findings of the research were that 12% of councils provided all the requirements of the Official Information Handbook on their web sites.