Goals, Challenges, and Capacity of Regional Data Portals in the United States: An Updated Understanding of Long-Standing Discussions.

Online participation in political processes has grown in advanced industrial societies like the United States (E. Anduiza, A. Gallego, and M. Cantijoch, “Online Political Participation in Spain: The Impact of Traditional and Internet Resources,” Journal of Information Technology & Politics 7: 4 (2010) 356–368). Experimentation and goal-setting have been done around integrating two-way communication into online GIS portals to advance online participation. Increasingly, web development information technology enables the development of these functions. However, the state of practice has not developed to support such activities. This paper relies on literature and a survey of US geoportals to provide an in-depth overview of the state of practice for such sites, including stated goals and challenges, current applications, and both technical and realized capabilities. This paper then discusses this state of practice through the lens of the development process of a new geoportal for the St Louis region. This discussion yields a response to issues raised in the literature and provides a framework for other groups that are considering development of similar sites. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]