Study
92 Percent of Most Popular
Federal Government Websites
Fail to Meet Basic Standards for 4 criteria:
- Security
- Speed
- Mobile Friendliness
- Accessibility
New ITIF (Information Technology and Innovation Foundation) Study Finds
(from a March 8, 2017 post)
Best
The five highest-performing websites are:
1. healthdata.gov
2. healthfinder.gov
3. consumerfinance.gov
4. whitehouse.gov (Trump administration)
(The Obama administration’s version of whitehouse.gov ranked 55.)
5. usembassy.gov
Image of site down
Worst
The five worst-performing websites among those studied are:
293. usphs.gov (Public Health Services)
294. fmc.gov (Federal Maritime Commission)
295. osti.gov (Office of Scientific and Technical Information)
296. trade.gov (International Trade Administration)
297. ipcc-wg2.gov (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
Details
92 percent of the 297 websites that the authors reviewed failed in at least one category. Some details:
Security:
- 33 percent of the reviewed websites failed the test for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates, which underpin most Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) connections—a common standard for encrypted Internet communications that all executive-branch websites are required to use.
Speed:
- While 22 percent of websites failed the speed test for desktops, 64 percent failed the speed test for mobile devices.
Mobile Friendliness:
- 41 percent of the reviewed websites were not mobile-friendly.
Accessibility:
- 42 percent of the reviewed websites failed the accessibility test for users with disabilities.