Emerging trends in local governments web strategies: Citizen web empowerment assessment in Italy

The “Internet revolution” has deeply impacted relations on every context of exchange of goods and services. Nowadays, citizens are aware of this historic change that is taking place and they are the bearers of a new demand in terms of: access to official, customized and “on demand” information and services, new opportunities for direct and informal relationships with politicians and civil servants, acquiring a proactive role within the network. This paper assesses the web strategies of Italian municipalities to measure their “citizen empowerment” effectiveness. The study was performed by adopting a revised version of the Citizens Web Empowerment Index (CWEI) designed to benchmark administrations´ official web portals. The analysis was made on the web portals of the 104 Italian cities with over 60,000 inhabitants in 2012 and 2013. Results show that there is still a general lack of strategy to strengthen citizens´ level of empowerment and participation through official web portals.