More People Are Talking to the Government on Mobile Devices

About 40 percent of federal government website visitors have gone to the same website on a smartphone or tablet, according to a quarterly survey by the Consultancy ForeSee released on Tuesday.

After the first quarter of 2013, only one-third of federal website visitors said they’d looked at a government site at some point using a smartphone or tablet.

The government is in the midst of a cross-agency push to make more of its information easily accessible on mobile devices.

Citizen satisfaction with federal websites overall remained essentially flat in the second quarter of 2013, the survey found. Satisfaction with federal websites has hovered around 75 points out of 100 on the American Consumer Satisfaction Index since 2009.

“The overall satisfaction score for e-government is fairly high, but we’re seeing the private sector continue to innovate and increase satisfaction while satisfaction with the public sector remains flat,” ForeSee President Larry Freed said in a statement. “Budgets are tight and it’s hard to justify investment in technology when you have something that meets citizens’ needs. But what’s sufficient today may quickly become deficient if agencies can’t keep up with emerging technology.”

As in previous surveys, the three highest scoring federal websites were specialized sites managed by the Social Security Administration. They are iClaim, a website for obtaining benefits; a retirement age estimator; and a site dedicated to Medicare prescription drug plan costs. Those sites all scored between 90 and 91 points.

The report was based on roughly 300,000 surveys from people visiting federal websites. 

(Image via D. Hammonds/Shutterstock.com)