Citizen satisfaction with e-government has been improving steadily and incrementally over the last two years. In the second quarter of 2006, 92 sites were measured and 20 of those sites scored 80 or higher, a threshold generally recognized by the ACSI to demonstrate excellent commitment to citizen or customer satisfaction.
"As citizens continue to utilize the online channel in higher numbers, the improvements in online government are encouraging," said Claes Fornell, director of the National Quality Research Center at the University of Michigan and founder of the ACSI. "But private-sector Web sites continue to set the bar, so federal Web sites should not be complacent." The e-government aggregate scores still trail private sector ACSI measures for e-business (75.9) and ecommerce (79.6), but the gap is gradually narrowing.
In most cases, online satisfaction scores for federal Web sites improve incrementally. Forty-nine percent of sites measured this quarter and last showed improvement in citizen satisfaction, though no site posted a quarterly increase of more than three points. Still, this is the highest percentage of improving Web sites and a big reason why the aggregate index is climbing. Twenty-four percent of sites showed no change and 27 percent declined.
"Many top performing government Web sites are using customer satisfaction measurement as a management metric and it shows," said Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results and author of the report. "When federal Web sites commit to collect and act on the 'voice of the customer,' they can focus their resources on areas that will have the most impact on satisfaction and future behavior. It's smart business and smart government."
Comparing the top performers that score 80 or better to the bottom-performing sites that score 70 or lower, there is quite a disparity in critical elements like search and navigation. The top-performers scored 20 percent higher as a group than the lower scoring sites for most measured elements. The disparity is even more pronounced when it comes to future behaviors, which includes likelihood to recommend and likelihood to return to the site. While top performers on aggregate scored 87 on likelihood to return to the site, the bottom performers had an aggregate score of 78. For likelihood to recommend, top performers aggregate scored 86, far above the lower performers at 73.
But even within the bottom-performing sites there is some good news. For example, the Department of the Treasury, Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau's Web site saw its score climb five points to 63 from one year ago and three points in the last quarter.
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