Utah and Maine Lead All States in Online Government Services, Says New Study

Utah and Maine are at the top of the list for e-government in the United States, according to the sixth annual e-government analysis conducted by researchers at Brown University. At the federal level, the White House and the Department of the State head the list of federal sites.

Darrell M. West, director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University, and a team of researchers examined 1,620 state and federal sites. The researchers analyzed 1,559 state sites (or an average of 31 sites per state) plus 48 federal government legislative and executive sites, and 13 federal court sites. They completed their research during June and July, 2005. Previous e-government studies were released in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004.

Researchers evaluated Web sites for the presence of various electronic features, such as online publications, online databases, audio clips, video clips, foreign language or language translation, advertisements, premium fees, user payments or fees. They also evaluated sites with regard to disability access, privacy policy, security policy, online services, digital signatures, credit card payments, e-mail addresses, comment forms, automatic e-mail updates, Web site personalization, PDA accessibility, quality control, and readability.

West and his colleagues found progress on several fronts. Seventy-three percent of state and federal sites have services that are fully executable online, up from 56 percent last year. In addition, a growing number of sites now display privacy and security policy statements. This year, 69 percent have some form of privacy policy on their site, up from 63 percent in 2004. Fifty-four percent now have a visible security policy, up from 46 percent last year. Eighteen percent of sites offer some type of foreign language translation, compared to 21 percent last year.

In terms of disability access for the visually impaired. Researchers used automated Bobby software from Watchfire Inc. to determine that 44 percent of federal sites and 40 percent of state sites meet the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) disability guidelines. The federal numbers are up from 42 percent in 2004, while the state numbers are up from 37 percent last year.

Researchers also studied a number of quality control issues on public sites. They used Watchfire's WebXM to analyze each of 71 federal agency Web sites. WebXM automates the scanning, analysis and reporting of online security, privacy, quality, accessibility and compliance issues across Web sites. The research team scanned a random sample of 5,000 pages from each agency and identified online quality issues that affect the user experience, such as broken links and anchors, missing titles, missing keywords, missing descriptions, warnings and redirects and poor search functionality. Nearly every agency had problems with content, search, and design.

The study also ranks the 50 states and various federal agencies on overall e-government performance. Using measures such as online services, attention to privacy and security, disability access, and foreign language translation, researchers rated the various state sites and compared their performance to last year.

The top ranking states include Utah, Maine, New Jersey, North Carolina, Michigan, Tennessee, Delaware, Massachusetts, Mississippi, and Nevada. The most poorly performing e-government states are Wyoming, Alaska, and Alabama. The five states with the greatest improvement over last year were Mississippi, up 40 places to No. 9; North Carolina, up 28 to No. 4; Nevada, up 25 to No. 10; Idaho, up 21 to No. 15; and Michigan, up 17 to No. 5.

This linked table shows where each state ranked in 2005, with the previous year's ranking or score in parentheses.

Top-rated federal Web sites include the White House, Department of State, Department of Treasury, Department