White House, PTO, FCC, FTC Website Standards Overall Fare Well in ITIF Assessment
Federal websites run by the FCC, FTC, Patent and Trademark Office and the White House performed well overall in meeting basic standards of accessibility, mobile friendliness, speed and security, reported the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. ITIF, which assessed 297 of the most popular government websites on those four criteria, said 92 percent weren't up to snuff and recommended the White House largely take the helm in helping fix them.
ITIF assigned an individual score on each criterion but also a composite score to provide an overall measure of how well the websites adhered to federal requirements and industry best practices. For instance, HealthData.gov topped the list with a 90.5 overall score. The White House site under the Trump administration ranked fourth, while Obama administration's White House site ranked 55th. During a panel Wednesday, ITIF research analyst Alan McQuinn, the report’s lead author, said President Donald Trump's WhiteHouse.gov site might have ranked higher but it doesn't contain as much information as the site under President Barack Obama.
PTO scored 84.3, giving it a ranking of 23, and FTC.gov ranked 39th with a score of 82.4. The commission runs donotcall.gov, which scored 87.4 and ranked eighth overall, while two other sites, IdentityTheft.gov ranked 83rd and FTC Complaint Assistant 84th. The FCC website scored 80.1 and ranked 62, a couple places behind Congress.gov. The Department of Commerce's website scored 75.9 and ranked 110 while the Senate site ranked 76 and the House's ranked 171. Websites run by the IRS and International Trade Administration were at the bottom. The FTC and FCC didn't comment Thursday.
ITIF tested desktop and mobile page load speeds and found that 78 percent of the websites passed the desktop metric, but only 36 percent passed the speed test for mobile devices. "Websites often failed this test because they failed to implement common optimization techniques, such as compressing images and prioritizing loading the part of the website visible without scrolling first," the report said. It added 59 percent of websites were mobile friendly, and common problems include buttons and links too small for easy use, illegible font sizes and lack of metatags to properly configure sites for mobile devices. ITIF said 58 percent of websites were accessible for users with disabilities. Problems included poor contrast and a lack of labels that could make it difficult for blind people who use a screen reader to navigate websites.
Security scored high, with about 66 percent of all websites containing secure sockets layer (SSL) certificates, which underpin the HTTP, a common standard for encrypted internet communications. Ninety percent of the websites enabled the Domain Name System Security (DNSSEC), which adds security to domain name system lookup and exchange processes. Sixty-one percent of websites passed both SSL and DNSSEC tests.
Fixing problems with federal websites can realistically be addressed by the Trump administration and Congress, said several experts. ITIF Vice President Daniel Castro, a co-author of the report released Wednesday, told us the issues may not specifically get Trump's attention but it may get consideration from cabinet-level heads, the U.S. chief technology officer, the interagency Chief Information Officers Council or the Office of Management and Budget. He said there also could be an opportunity to create a chief marketing officer to help provide consistency across the different agency websites: "Trump is known as a marketer. He's known for branding. He is someone in theory who understands the idea of consistency and good user experience." The White House didn't comment.
There may be indications that the administration has started addressing some issues, added Castro. It's taken down some websites, which may not be political decisions but realizing some sites may be outdated, he said. There's some consolidation of websites such as biometrics.gov, which was a separate site in November but now redirects to the Department of Homeland Security's biometrics program, he added.
"It's still very early in the administration, but I'm optimistic," said Vice President-Marketing Chris Neff of government website developer NIC, in an interview. "This is an administration that has a private sector sensibility in getting things done, focusing on priorities and executing." He said that he thinks the administration views technology as a "tremendous" tool to provide government services.