Canada's Government Portal Page example essay topic

FIRSTGOV. COM VERSUS CANADA. COM compared the United States First Gov. Com portal page with our neighbor Canada's government portal page. I first looked at first gov. com to get a feel for the United States government page. When you first open web you immediately notice that there is an abundance of information. There are four main tabs set up as the main crux of the web page and those are: For Citizens, For Businesses and Non Profit, For Federal Employees, and Government to Government.

Right off the bat renewing a drivers license and passport application is what jumped out to me personally. These were under the, "Citizens Get It Done" heading. Also, under this heading were links that direct you to e-filing taxes, checking immigration status, governmental benefits, government job application procedures, changing your address, and even shopping at government auctions. At mid page on the For Citizens tab was a section entitled, information by topics.

There are 14 main topics and when you click on one of them it sends you to another link that has numerous other topics that a user can click on for almost any kind of information you can imagine. For example: I clicked on Education and Jobs topic. Under the topic is brief information on what you can find such as employment, training, careers, labor, wages, workplace, online learning, schools, student and teacher resources... This led me to a page that has well over 70 links to other topics.

A few examples here are: US Dept of Labor, US Dept of Education, College Search, Disability Information, Career Choices, Labor Relations, and many more subjects to look up. Each of these links takes you to other pages full of related information with more links to follow. What I found interesting also was you can read this web site in almost any language. I clicked on Spanish and the entire web page converted to Spanish. Also on the left hand side of the home page is a small index with links entitled: A-Z agency index, Federal Executive, Federal Legislature, Federal Judicial, Cross agency portals, state government, local government, and tribunal government. I chose to look at Federal Legislature and that takes to a page where you can find out information on the US Senate, US House of Representative, and agencies that support Congress.

An abundance of information in all areas in the index. When you go to Canada's web site, web e. html, you first have to choose English or French and then it takes you to the opening page in the language you select. The opening page has 3 main tabs entitled: Canadians and Residents, Non Canadians, and Canadian Business. Under Canadians and Residents tab you can find information on topics such as: health, jobs and taxes, Government benefits and services for you, and On-line tools that save you time.

Under the Non Canadians tab you can find out about immigration, tourism, doing business, studying, global affairs. The last tab, Canadian Business, has information sources for federal, provincial and territorial information and services such as business start-up, taxes, financing. If you click on Canadians and Residents tab it takes you to another page with 21 other links for different topics such as: economy, children, Canadians living abroad, etc... Being a US citizen I clicked on the Non Canadian tab and it takes you to a page that has 3 choices, going to Canada, doing business with Canada, Canada and the world. Canada's site also offers links to government news, online forms and services, and government contacts.

Comparing the two, the first gov website offers quite a substantial amount of information than the Canadian website. The only downside to first gov is that it appears very busy. There is so much information and links that it takes you a minute to get over all and settle down and look for what you need. You can definitely get caught up with researching on first gov because every link takes you to another link and more information.

Canada's website is not as busy appearing. It also doesn't seem to offer as much information as first gov. Overall, I would have to pick first gov as the better government website because of all the useful information that it has to offer. web e. html web.