State and local government cyber-budgeting.

• Author: Stowers, Genie N.L.

In the few years since the World Wide Web (WWW or the Web) has become popular, many state and local governments have created a presence there. By spring of 1997, all states and 48.3 percent of large cities (those with populations of 100,000 or more) - 101 cities - had a World Wide Web site. A relatively large percentage also had moved some budgeting information onto their web sites - 76 percent of all states and $1 percent of large cities included some budgeting information on their web sites (see Exhibit 1). The data in this article are derived from the author's study and evaluation of all the states' web sites and those of cities over 100,000 population that were listed early in 1997 with Public Technology, Inc. (PTI)(http://pti.nw.dc.us/AllAboard.htm) as official government sites.

Budgeting Information on the Web

Many of the study jurisdictions chose to feature their budgeting information on their home pages, the most visible page on a jurisdiction's web site - an important measure of how important that information is to that government or agency. States and larger cities included budgeting information on their home pages at very similar levels (20 percent of the large cities and 18 percent of all states), and while not always on home pages, budgeting information ranked as the 20th most frequent type of information among states and the 16th most frequent among large cities. The inclusion of budget documents is one of the most important uses of the Web as a policy development tool today.

The WWW is being used in the public-sector budgeting field for a variety of both external and internal purposes:

* to provide basic budgetary information to citizens, community and business groups, employees, and other agencies;

* to support budget proposals by posting supporting documentation;

* to educate citizens about the budgeting process and encourage feedback, comments, and online discussions about budget proposals;

* as a way to inform the community about proposed new budgetary policies;

* to distribute forms (such as tax forms) to citizens;

* to allow users to conveniently search online databases for information such as requests for proposals or vendor information;

* internally, to distribute budget preparation forms or spreadsheet templates to agencies over the Web; and

* internally, to post budget process information such as manuals, deadlines, and sample proposals.

There are innovative budgeting-related activities to be found among the many state/local government web sites. Exhibit 1 graphs the proportion of large cities and states among the author's survey that incorporate particular budgeting-related features on their web pages. States include these features more often than do cities; some of the divergence is due to the difference in urban and state service functions, while some is also due to the differences in resources available. Economic development activities are foremost among state web sites and an important feature among large cities. Economic development and attracting new business to the community are clearly important reasons for having a web site.

Another important area is purchasing. For states, purchasing sites incorporate some of the most innovative, interactive, and heavily used services being provided on public-sector web sites today. Most states have requests for proposals (RFPs), vendor lists, contract information, even searchable databases containing this information represented on their web sites. Some of these areas are password protected to ensure that only registered users may access them. This provides a great convenience and service to the business community wishing to do business with the state.

States also are taking advantage of the potential of the Web in the area of revenue information. Many (76 percent) provide state tax forms for the use of citizens and businesses; 97.4 percent are providing these forms in the PDF format. The PDF format requires the use of other software to be able to read the forms, but it assures that the resulting forms are authentic and able to be used in actual tax submissions.

Cities' use of revenue information on their web sites is mostly limited to the presentation of budgetary information. Banking or commerce is not yet represented on their sites, and most cities would not have the kind of purchasing volume to necessitate investment in developing online databases.

Technical Features of Web Sites

The many technical features that can be used on the World Wide Web make it a multifaceted and...