Finding government Information on the Internet

Question 62 asked respondents how they found government information on the Internet. Respondents reported that the most common ways for finding government information was through search engines e.g. 'Google' and 'Yahoo' (39%) and the government portal website www.govt.nz (15%). However 21% of respondents did not know and 11% listed other ways. There were no significant results to this question when related to demographic factors. People with higher qualifications appear to be more likely to use search engines, but the numbers are too small to be sure they are representative.

What government information do people want online in future?

Question 63 was an open question which asked " What government services or information would you be interested in accessing over the Internet in future, that is not currently available as far as you know?" Approximately half the responses were 'Don't know', 'nothing' or similar. Many of the others appear to be information that is currently available, such as student loan balances. This suggests that respondents had limited knowledge of the material available through the Internet. In addition, many respondents alluded to the difficulty in accessing or using websites, finding them difficult to navigate, as well as gaining government information in general. There appeared to be a perception that the process of getting government information was usually cumbersome. The most common meaningful responses, in approximate order of frequency, were as follows:

Table 11: Government information/services respondents were interested in accessing via the Internet.