Early in June of 2002, I was assigned the task of researching the latest and greatest in enterprise search engine technology that would be appropriate for use in an E-Government Portal.
My client had said “the government is planning to provide a single entry point where visitors can come and search all of the hundreds of ministry and government related websites. This is a step towards the achievement of a lofty concept called Government Online or E-Gov”.
The project was among a series of key initiatives the government is taking to make it easier for individuals and businesses to find information about government services and to provide easy access to the millions of government documents that are classified public domain.
I thought this would be a wonderful idea! My mind raced back to the unpleasant incident a friend of mine has had to deal with when her purse was stolen last year. In addition to her credit cards and substantial sum of money, she had lost her Driver’s License, Health Card, her Social Insurance Card, her Citizenship Card, everything!
She was faced with the daunting task of finding out how to apply for a replacement, where to apply and what the requirements there were to replace each of her cards. I said to her that I was sure all of this information was “somewhere out there on the Internet”, but did not quite know the most efficient way to locate the right place to go to in each case.
I felt that it would have been wonderful if there were a single page to go to regardless of which Ministry offered the services or whether the service needs were from Federal, Provincial or Municipal level of the government.
More Relevant Search Results
One question that comes to mind is “why don’t we simply use Internet search engines such as Google.com or AllTheWeb.com?”
The answer is, of course, because users want more specific search results. If you enter “replacing driver’s license” in Google.com you will get over 16,000 search results!
Enterprise site search engines are necessary because, in addition to producing localized search results, the search engine can be configured to produce search results that are suited to their visitors. More frequently asked questions are ranked higher. Search results remain fresh and up-to-date because all updates to the government related websites can be quickly re-indexed in near real time basis.
More complete results are also obtained because the search engine can be instructed to index all PDF files, Word documents and contents of databases. Although such documents tend to contain more detailed information, they are in many cases not accessed by external search engines simply following referenced link paths.
Influencing Process Improvement If business researchers and individuals experience a positive search environment and are able to quickly locate information they are looking for they tend to come back for more services.
Satisfied users also tend to tell other colleagues. If a user was able to easily find valuable information about government opportunities or how to incorporate a company on-line, saving quite a bit of money; such valuable information tends to spread quickly.
The more visitors there are, the more demand there is for on-line services. The more justification and desire for government departments to streamline their processes to provide end-to-end services online… leading to E-Gov utopia!
Efrem H Selassie is a senior consultant a ACIS Consulting. ACIS provides website technology development and Enterprise Search Engine integration services. For more information, visit http://www.acisconsulting.com