Communicating with Government Online

Communicating with Government — Around the world, governments are showing interest in delivering online services to citizens. The Government of Canada is at the forefront of these developments. This report focuses on citizen-initiated communication. It explores how Canadians use the Internet to communicate with elected and non-elected officials and how they would like to enhance that communication.

The report sets out to:

• Establish the incidence of contacting government employees and elected officials, as well as the communication means used.
• Analyse the current usage of government Web sites in terms of incidence, frequency and attitudes.
• Explore features that online Canadians want to have available from government Web sites.
• Investigate the level of interest in various, not yet available, forms of engagement with e-government, such as virtual meetings with officials from different levels of government.
• Reveal the attitudes towards online deliberation of public issues, as well as the likelihood of partaking in moderated discussion forums.
• Gauge the level of interest in various models of online engagement with public issues, such as citizen panels and juries.
• Measure the interest in voting online, as well as its perceived advantages and disadvantages.

For more information, take a look at the order form or contact Darko Radjevic.