German Government online

The Press and Information Office of the Federal Government of Germany, the public relations department of the German Government, has been on the Web since 1996 as a complement to conventional publication methods. It acts as an entry point for the German Government referring to the Web pages and servers of the German Government itself, other German constitutional bodies, German embassies, Permanent Missions and information centers, and other German institutions. It started with existing information material, converted to HTML. Due to the national mandate and due to the information of public concern in this Web site, additional requirements had to be fulfilled: A highly automated information processing around the clock, a high security level implemented, and online ordering of booklets and actual information (Webcasting). The paper describes how we succeeded together with our co-operation partners to bring the German Government represented by the Press and Information Office into the Web. Naturally it covers only some parts of our two-years-project which ended in March, 1998. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights resented.