Two Decades of Online Information and Digital Services: Quality Improvements to Municipality Websites and User Preferences

A journey through the landscape of quality assessment and website improvement within the public sector in Norway has shown large changes and new ways of interaction and communication between citizens and the public sector. In the past two decades, there has been a tremendous shift in the sense that paper-based communication has largely been replaced with online content and digital services. Key aspects of this transformation have included initiatives taken by the government, changes in users' needs and requirements, and the creation of organizational values because of digitalization. Inspired by this, the aim of the present paper was to investigate the design of public websites, especially those of municipalities. To this end, in this study, we have reported on initiatives taken by the government in the last 20 years. In addition, we have reported a test conducted in a usability lab and qualitative interviews pertaining to users' voices and preferences. Results showed changes related to the design and visual appearance of websites and that users had clear preferences. Search boxes, neutral colors, a clean and simple design, and the structure and grouping of information were preferred. Quality assessments of public websites generally triggered a positive effect, both in terms of organization awareness and increased quality. The findings had implications for the direction the sector should take in the coming years. Concluding remarks have been given at the end of the paper.