Satisfaction with federal Web sites reaches new heights

The public's satisfaction with government Web sites reached an all-time high during the fourth quarter of 2008, according to a report released on Tuesday.

Federal Web sites received an aggregate score of 74.1 out of 100 points on the e-government section of the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index, marking a 0.2 point increase from the third quarter of 2008, and a 1.2 point increase from one year ago. The latest score was the best since the index's launch in 2003.

That's good news for the Obama administration, said Larry Freed, president and chief executive officer of ForeSee Results, which published the report. The Internet is central to the new president's plans to increase government transparency and improve citizen engagement.

Freed said it was difficult to pinpoint one reason for the progress because several agencies upgraded their sites.

"It's clearly an uphill battle," he said. "The model in government is a little more slow-moving in terms of improvement [compared to the private sector], but they have tried to increase the pace. A lot of the time it's about getting the funding and resources to move forward."

The index measures 95 federal Web sites on a scale of 1 to 100, with a score of 80 indicating citizens are highly satisfied with the site. Emphasis is given to searchability, functionality and ease of navigation.

Twenty-two of the government sites (23 percent) received scores of 80 or better. E-commerce and transaction sites continued to earn the highest marks. In general, portals and agencies' main sites rose, while career-building stops such as USAJobs.gov lost points compared with the same time one year ago.

The Internal Revenue Service's main Web site, was among those that showed the most improvement. It gained eight points during the last quarter of 2008, earning a score of 72. The Census Bureau's primary site also made big strides, boosting its satisfaction score by seven points to 73.

The fourth quarter marked the third straight increase for the index after it declined throughout much of 2007 and early 2008. Freed said the downward trend in scores in 2007 likely reflected diminishing support from the Bush administration for e-government. Scores recovered as agencies began to take individual responsibility for their public sites, he said.

He is optimistic the Obama administration will provide stronger support for e-government.

"We're at an interesting time for e-government," Freed said. "This seems to be clearly the most technology and Internet-savvy administration we've seen. Much of their platform centers around transparency, communication [and] accountability, and the Web is the perfect place to make that happen in this country."

The official Briefing Room blog on WhiteHouse.gov is "a great step forward," Freed said, praising agencies for embracing Web 2.0 technologies. But he warned existing policies likely would have to be updated to accommodate the new approach.

"I hope one of the things Obama will bring to the table is to take the constraints off of Web sites moving forward," he said. "Obviously security has to be top of the line, but there is some middle ground there."

Freed also cautioned the administration against creating too many Web sites.

"The average citizen, do they really know where to go?" he said. "USA.gov has done a good job of creating a gateway, but it's not all that well-known. There needs to be a serious governmentwide effort to make navigation for the citizens easier."