While e-government provides increasing opportunities for people
to access information and services with more ease, speed and
efficiency, a frustrating stumbling block has been hit by many who
try to do so.
The results of a survey by CCW Research, a
leading IT consulting firm, that were released on November 7 say
that various levels of government have been registering domain
names in an ad hoc fashion that makes their sites harder to find
and leaves potential for great confusion.
According to internationally-accepted protocols, the obvious
domain name-ending for government websites should be "gov.cn." But
many use suffixes that make them sound more like social
organizations or even businesses, says the report.
For example, the provincial government site of Guizhou is
"gzgov.gov.cn." Qinghai
Province uses "qhinfo.com," a suffix used by private
enterprises.
Use of pinyin is also not standardized; some use entire
words whilst others use abbreviations.
So the provincial government site of Fujian
is, predictably, "fujian.gov.cn," but Jilin's is "jl.gov.cn."
Nearly half of the provincial government websites are named the
latter way, which is prone to cause ambiguity. For example,
"hn.gov.cn" is neither the provincial website of Henan
nor Hunan,
but the site of the Science and Technology Bureau of Huainan in Anhui
Province.
Analyst Qu Xiaodong from CCW Research said the lack of
standardization of government domain names reflects a lack of
awareness of public usability?-- a central point of
e-government?-- among the people constructing these sites.
(China.org.cn by Zhang Tingting, November 14, 2004)