About 91 percent of federal websites failed at least one of the government and industry standards for design and development in the latest test by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). The metrics analyzed included an assessment of speed, accessibility and security.
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Benchmarking U.S. Government Websites [Summary], by Daniel Castro, Galia Nurko, and Alan McQuinn, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (November 27, 2017).
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Benchmarking U.S. Government Websites [Full Report][PDF], by Daniel Castro, Galia Nurko, and Alan McQuinn, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (November 2017).
ITIF used publicly available tools to assess page-load speed, mobile friendliness, security, and accessibility of 469 of the most popular federal websites. Websites generally scored high on security, but only 64 percent passed both security tests. Only 60 percent of the reviewed websites were accessible for users with disabilities.
Among the highest scoring websites were:
| site | score |
|---|---|
| Science.gov | 86.3 |
| FBI.gov | 85.2 |
| Whitehouse.Gov | 83.8 |
Among the lowest scoring websites:
| site | score |
|---|---|
| uscourts.gov | 52.8 |
| lbl.gov | 52.1 |
| lanl.gov | 41.6 |
| federalreserve.gov | 36.5 |
GPO.gov scored 70.2 and LOC.gov scored 69.5. One oddity of the report is that it tested and ranked govtrack.us and even lists it once incorrectly as "govtrack.gov." Govtrack.us is a privately run, non-government website that uses government data to publish the status of federal legislation, information about Congressional Representatives and Senators and their voting records. It scored in the top 10 of all measured websites with a score of 84.5.
ITIF suggests:
Federal government websites still require significant improvement. Federal agencies should prioritize building and maintaining fast, convenient, secure and accessible websites.
The new tests and report follow up on tests done last year and a report on those tests issued last March (Many Federal Websites Fail to Meet Basic Standards for Speed and Security).
See also:
- Report: Government Websites Are (Somehow) Getting Worse, By Mohana Ravindranath, NextGov (Nov. 27, 2017).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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