Study: Russia closer to the user than Switzerland
A comprehensive research project compares the national websites of Russia and Switzerland. The study also measured how closely the content relates to citizens. Russia performs slightly better in this regard than Switzerland, often cited as a model democracy.
As part of the intensified scientific cooperation between Switzerland and Russia, the Swiss National Science Foundation approved a project in 2009 that enabled a systematic comparison of national websites in Russia and Switzerland. The technical measurements were carried out by the Bern Institute for Applied Argument Research (IFAA), the language-relevant analyses in Cyrillic were carried out by Lomonosov University in Moscow and the theoretical background was provided by ETH Lausanne.
The scientific project used computer-aided content analysis to analyze all departments and federal offices in Switzerland. In Russia, the websites of all ministries, agencies and offices were measured simultaneously. All content on the government websites was compared with current search data from various search engines in order to measure the proximity of online communication to citizens in both countries. In Switzerland, the websites that performed best in the ranking of offices were deca.admin.ch and in Russia Pfrf.ru. Switzerland is at the lower end of this international eGovernment benchmark. Federal Alcohol Board and in Russia the Federal Tax Service. Overall, Russia performs slightly better than Switzerland.
Content differences and similarities RU/CH
A comparison of the most important topics in eGovernment in the two countries reveals very clear differences in the communication priorities of the administrations of the two countries: In Russia, the military, money, government and legislation topics are written about much more frequently, while in Switzerland economic, energy, labor and transport topics dominate public communication.
Interestingly, according to the head of research, Christoph Glauser, from the IFAA Institute, common topics have gained an important position on the national internet portals in both countries: Maternity, diseases, money laundering, innovations, finance and strategies. In terms of figures, Russia also offers much more information in the area of archives and for companies than Switzerland. Only on the subject of foreigners do both countries communicate about the same amount of information.
