Critical analysis of technical and non-technical characteristics which influence the efficacy of government multilingual web sites in Sri Lanka

Abstract

According to the "e-Government" concept which is really new to Sri Lanka, introduced by the present government, All the Ministries and Institutions related to the government are in a mission of establishing multilingual webs for them which should be highly aligned with e-Government concepts. Currently a large number of government websites are in operation but only a few of them are functioning in all three languages of Sinhala, English and Tamil. Due to the rise of web enabled information transactions, the necessity has arisen to evaluate the effectiveness of government websites, especially in our local languages/ Many of the Sinhala and Tamil versions of government websites were found to have shortcomings owing to both technical and non-technical issues. To get a precise idea about the status of these multilingual webs, we carried out structured interviews with both owners and users to get their perception about these webs. Further these analytical data were compared with the respective objectives of the owners of the websites. To assure the survey was focused and objective an organized questionnaire was prepared which covered the areas of functionalities of the webs./ Moreover this thesis discussed the main outcome of the research with the aid of statistical bar graphs with analytical data. Further the study provides important recommendations which should be followed by the web owners to create more successful multilingual webs which will cater to the requirements of their audience in a professional manner.