The survey (available at http://www.insidepolitics.org/egovt06usPressRelease.pdf) listed Texas and New Jersey as the best states for e-government.
"FirstGov.gov was our most highly rated site this year, and the IRS Web site was rated sixth out of 61 government Web sites," said Darrell West, director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown in Providence, R.I. "There are a variety of different features that make them stand out. Those sites have a lot of online services, and they take issues of privacy and security pretty seriously. They are also generally bilingual and provide language accessibility to non-English speakers."
West and a team of researchers examined 1,564 Web sites; 1,503 state sites (or an average of 30 sites per state), plus 48 federal government sites and 13 federal court sites.
The evaluations of the Web sites were based on a number of features, including online publications, databases, foreign language content or language translation services, advertisements, user payments or fees, disability access, privacy and security statements, the number of online services available, support for credit card payments, e-mail addresses, comment forms, automatic e-mail updates, PDA accessibility, and readability level.
"What we found over the course of the project is the steady improvement in the number of online services and how seriously government agencies are treating privacy and security," West said. "There still remain design issues -- a lot of agencies have their own look, meaning that it's hard for visitors to navigate those sites. So we suggest there needs to be greater standardization of government Web sites."
West said every year the sites with the lowest rankings seem to be the court sites, and he doesn't understand why they're not getting better.
"I think the problem is that courts are more insular, and they don't define public outreach as a really important mission for them, so they don't really have much in the way of online services," West said. "They don't put a lot of information online. They need to get a lot better at it."
The survey found that most of the state Web sites prominently display key features and services on the main page or they provide a link to online services.
The TexasOnline portal site has a simple, effective navigation system and an exhaustive list of more than 500 online services contained within its Web sites -- the most of all sites assessed, the survey found. The electronic services are divided into 15 categories and organized alphabetically, allowing for quick access to the most-wanted services, including online sales tax payment, vehicle registration renewals and searchable license records databases.
In addition, TexasOnline features audio and video clips on the majority of its Web site, as well as a Spanish version of nearly every page, West said.
"Overall, Texas has made a strong effort to deliver convenient access to a vast number of online services, thus topping our rankings," West said.
New Jersey's Web site, ranked the No. 2 state Web site in the study, offers users the chance to personalize the portal page. Registered users of MyNewJersey can customize the site by selecting the layout of the home page and the news content displayed, the study found.
New Jersey also provides easy access to online services via drop-down boxes that direct the user to common e-services such as paying traffic violations or searching unclaimed property. Furthermore, the site contains direct links to live online support and a form to e-mail the governor.
Some states, the study found, do a poor job presenting their services, burying the most useful functions of their sites. The Wyoming portal page, for instance, has little mention of the services offered by the state's Web site, making navigation difficult, according to the survey. States could make their sites more user-friendly by providing quick access to e-services and useful features from the main departmental and portal pages, West said.
Other findings include the following:
- 54 percent of federal Web sites (up from 44 percent last year) and 43 percent of state sites (up from 40 percent last year) meet the World Wide Web Consortium disability guidelines. 77 percent of state and federal sites have services that are fully executable online, compared to 73 percent last year.
- 1 percent of state and federal sites are accessible through PDAs, pagers or mobile phones, the same percentage as last year.
- 71 percent of state and federal Web sites have some form of privacy policy on their sites, up from 69 percent in 2005, and 63 percent have a visible security policy, up from 54 percent last year. 30 percent of sites offered some type of foreign language translation, up from 18 percent last year.
- 64 percent of government Web sites are written at the 12th grade reading level, which is much higher than that of the average American. After Texas and New Jersey, the highest ranking states include Oregon, Michigan, Utah, Montana, New York, Illinois, Indiana and Pennsylvania.
The top-rated federal Web sites also include the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Commerce, the Department of the Treasury, the Internal Revenue Service, the Postal Service, the Department of Education, the Social Security Administration and the Department of State.