地理資訊系統對於提升公共政策規劃、分析與評估的潛力日益受到重視，許多在規劃、地理、森林等自然相關學科的學者亦持續不斷地針對這個議題進行研究。而近年開始受到重視，亦與公共行政及政治學者有密切關係的，則是公共參與式地理資訊系統(Public Participation Geographic Information Systems, PPGIS)的提出。所謂的PPGIS，就是在地理資訊系統的現有架構中，提升公共參與的機制設計，藉此讓民眾可以參與公共政策的規劃與討論。此議題概念與公共行政所處的民主行政、社區參與等理論都有相當密切的關係。然而，即使此概念的提出已有十年左右的歷史，國內對於相關議題的討論卻幾乎未曾出現，國內外相關的實證研究也相當缺乏，絕大部分文獻仍停留在其正面效能的宣導。因此，本研究的最主要目的，除了介紹PPGIS的概念之外，亦將實地從GIS的內容，探討我國政府機關在GIS系統上所提供的公共參與功能，及其是否符合參與式地理資訊系統的概念。本文研究以多人評估的方式，評估我國政府機關現有地理資訊系統所提供公共參與的功能，主要的測量變數為三個評估PPGIS的重要標準，包括「互動性」、「好用度」與「視覺化」。藉由此三個層面的評估，衡量出我國地方政府在GIS網站中可提供的社區參與程度。研究結果發現，包括互動參與功能不佳、好用度待加強、視覺化功能待提供等問題，都是我國地方政府GIS網站亟待努力的方向。

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) has been increasingly utilized in the areas urban planning, policy analysis, and policy evaluation since the 1960s.Recently, the development of Public Participation Geographical Information Systems (PPGIS) has particularly received much attention, and raised many political and management issues. PPGIS is a variation of geographical information system in which citizenry participation is readily facilitated. People can participate in urban planning/public policy processes through the PPGIS. Although PPGIS has been proposed for more than ten years, little empirical research has been done to assess how governmental agencies have been implementing this concept.The main purposes of this research are to systematically explore the existing GIS Websites of Taiwan's local governments based on the PPGIS construction principles. Specifically, the authors invited a panel of coders to conduct a content analysis on the thirty-four-on-line GIS Websites maintained by the city and county governments of Taiwan. The performance indicators adopted by this research are classified into three categories: interactivity, usability and visualization based on the GIS as well as Web design literature.The research findings show that only two (5.9%) websites have provided two/three way communicative functions, and only a handful of websites have paid attention to web usability and visualization. Finally, this paper recommends that GIS Web-Sites are in need of improvement on all of the three dimensions, hence local governments should expand their GIS efforts.