Victorian.Government@Online: E-Marketing Strategy In Review

Abstract

Since 1994, Australian and New Zealand business and government have increasingly used the graphical face of the Internet, the World Wide Web (Web), for a number of market-related purposes. For much of this period, the Victorian government has publicly stated its commitment to the information economy. The inaugural broadcast of the Victorian State Budget over the Internet (Net) in 2000 highlighted this commitment to providing government information and services online. By way of background review, this paper examines the implementation of the Victorian government's Online Government 2001 (Multimedia Victoria 1998) strategy and to a lesser extent the Commonwealth government's GovernmentOnline strategy (GovernmentOnline 2000). It is acknowledged that there are a number of challenges facing the developers of government websites. These challenges include adherence to legislative requirements, marketing to key stakeholders and the general public, as well as the impact of bureaucratic processes on government website development. Content analysis using the model developed for the WebQUAL Audit (Deans and Adam 1999; Adam and Deans 2000a) was undertaken with a small number of Victorian government websites to compare government's stated online strategy with observable Website implementation. The paper also draws on preliminary results from the WebQUAL Audit of business and government sites conducted in Australia and New Zealand (Deans and Adam 1999; Adam and Deans 2000a). The central finding of the paper is that as Adam and Deans (2000a) have found in the business sector, government has yet to progress beyond use of the Internet as a one-way marketing communication tool.