Growth of citizen satisfaction with federal websites has stalled, reports the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). The drop in satisfaction is also evident in the fact that only 25 percent of the 95 sites in the Index show an increase since last quarter, while 40 percent decline and 35 percent remain constant.
"If e-government sites just maintain the status quo, they will see satisfaction erode over time as citizens become increasingly Internet-savvy and their standards rise," said Dr. Claes Fornell, Director of the National Quality Research Center at the University of Michigan and founder of ACSI.
Two transactional sites from Social Security Administration lead the Index again this quarter with a score of 87: the Internet Social Security Benefits Application site and the Help With Medicare Prescription Drug Plan Costs site. This score equals private sector e-commerce leaders Amazon and Barnes & Noble, two of the highest scoring companies in ACSI.
The ACSI methodology shows which elements, or drivers, of online satisfaction have the highest potential for increasing satisfaction, return visits, recommendations and use of the site as a primary resource.
Search continues to be a high priority element for over 80 percent of federal sites, although the proportion has declined by 10 percent from last year, suggesting that some websites are making strides in tackling search problems. Content, on the other hand, scores high at 80, but continues to be a low impact element. This means that improving satisfaction with content will likely have relatively little impact on overall satisfaction.
Department-level websites has an average score of 72.0, slightly below the Index, but none of the sites in this category achieve a top-tier score of 80 or higher. Department sites, a category that also includes independent agency main sites, are often the first stop for citizens in their quest for information on specific agencies and programs. With limited space available on department home pages, search and navigation are the leading challenges for citizens as they access the vast body of available information. Examples of sites in this category include the General Services Administration (GSA), Department of Defense (DOD), Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and the Small Business Administration (SBA).
On average, sites for individual government programs outperform both department and agency-level sites. Sixty percent of the sites measured this quarter fall into the program category, which has an average score of 75.2, nearly 2 percent above the overall Index score.
Even though thirty-one percent of the program sites achieved scores of 80 or greater, the range of scores, from 56 to 87, is the biggest of any category. This suggests that many programs have work to do to bring the quality of their websites up to a level matching that of their peers.
"It's helpful for e-government sites to benchmark their performance against scores for departments, agencies and programs, because these benchmarks reflect the structure of government," said Anne Kelly, CEO of the Treasury's Federal Consulting Group. "These kinds of comparisons can provide points of reference in making business cases for improvements."
