Information management in the websites of Spanish city councils

Spain’s authorities have become more agile since the generalisation of the Internet, the use of which has significantly improved the ways in which they communicate with the country’s citizens and companies. The subjects of this study were the websites produced by the Town Councils of Spain’s provincial capitals as well as those of the autonomous cities Ceuta and Melilla. Their content and the personnel in charge of their creation, development, maintenance and updating were all examined. A questionnaire was designed to study the content of and the services offered by these charged with the technical and content management of these sites were identified by a multiple choice-type questionnaire sent by e-mail and fax to those responsible for these new services. Thirty three of the 52 councils contacted responded. The results show that at the municipal level Spain is still in the phase of making information available, with some local governments moving faster than others towards an ‘electronic administration’. Nonetheless, the country is still far from working by ‘electronic government’.