A comparative analysis of Internet development in Spanish biggest populations

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the information systems on the web of the Local Public Administrations of the ten most populated towns in Spain’s territory. Application of a new contents analysis proposed by Chaín which has two aspects: the contents on one side and on the other the level of evolution of the e-government according to the stage that they are at. The basic goal is to analyze and compare the contents of the website systems of Spanish local governments. The conclusion is that, despite the effort carried out, there is still a lot of information that may be interesting for citizens and companies that needs to be added. Regarding the stages of the e-government, they are all located in the first one, the informative one, although there is evidence of important advances in the second and third stages in some of those municipal councils. There is a direct relationship between the number of inhabitants of a municipality and the levels of evolution that its website systems show, both in the contents and in the service they offer, although this cannot be taken as an only valid variable in the stages of evolution of the e-government