DotGov

Dear Santa,

I hope you got the elves on top of my previous wishes. My third wish is a very exciting one, which would definitely shake things up.

Santa Art by Anne (7 years)

The saying, “To measure is to know” also applies to e-Government. If we really want to give e-Government a boost on all levels, there is no better way than to start benchmarking it and then publishing the scores online. In Europe, they have been benchmarking Government websites for years now with impressive results (which is probably why European countries are leading the international e-Government polls).

A benchmark has 4 important effects:
1. As we all know, nobody wants to be on the bottom of any list so benchmarking urges directors to put e-Government on the agenda of every governmental organization.
2. Mayors, Council, Directors and other government officials of organizations that are at the top of the list tend to put more time and energy in e-Government. By doing this, they pave the path for the rest.
3. Governmental organizations are not competitors. The effect of sharing benchmark scores results in more cooperation and sharing of experience and knowledge.
4. And of course: “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” Benchmarking will give any governmental organization its own tool to find out where they are, where they can go to and how they can improve.

So what do we need to benchmark? I suggest to benchmark 4 categories:
1. Accessibility: the accessibility of the website. Can be done largely automatic.
2. Open Data: the amount and quality of data sources that are opened to the public.
3. Public Engagement/Social Media: the various ways the government interacts and works with the citizens
4. Online Services: the amount and quality of services that is provided on the website

Santa, maybe the Government could hire some of your elves to help during your off season!

This is a series of 4 Santa Wishes for a better e-Government:
-eGov Santa Wish #1: enforce web accessibility for local government.
-eGov Santa Wish #2: an One Stop Government.
-eGov Santa Wish #3: benchmark all Government websites
-eGov Santa Wish #4: It’s the Local Government, Stupid!

Comments

09 December 2009 @ 6pm by Sarah Bourne

Michael, I was with you all the way until I saw your comment about accessibility. If you rely on just automated testing, you will not have a functional metric. Some of the most important things that go into making a site universally usable can only be assessed by using human judgment. You can “pass” an automated test and still have a site that is largely useless to someone using a screen reader. So, don’t underestimate the effort it takes to do a reasonable assessment!

But I would love to see a public scoreboard of accessibility, for all the reasons you mention.

09 December 2009 @ 10pm by Michael

And you are right Sarah. Automatic testing can only test some functionalities that are based on the source code. Manual testing needs to be done for proper rating. However, an automated test could give a indication. And there are loads of sites out there that would not even pass an automated test on a subset of criteria.

When a site passes an automated test for 100%, it will be very likely that the developers have taken serious effort to make it accessible (to some extend).

The biggest gain is to bring all sites that not even pass the automated test into the daylight. That will hopefully result in extra awareness and focus.

(We’re going to post more on web accessibility in the next weeks)

10 December 2009 @ 6am by Rhonda

Participating government websites are benchmarked for site visitors’ satisfaction in the ACSI (American Customer Satisfaction Index). The drivers of satisfaction are also benchmarked. Please see http://www.theacsi.org and ForeSee Results quarterly commentaries: http://www.foreseeresults.com/ACSI_ListCommentary.html

Some of our forward-thinking Fed gov clients are already measuring Transparency, so the next quarterly release will likely include it.