Citizens Give Federal Web Sites High Ratings

Consumer satisfaction with federal government Web sites has inched higher, according to a quarterly E-government report issued Tuesday by the University of Michigan and the online consumer-satisfaction research firm ForeSee Results.

Using the university's American Customer Satisfaction Index, E-government satisfaction last quarter increased 1.3% to 72.1, which is identical to overall citizen satisfaction with government--on and offline. The E-government score also is very close to the ACSI E-business score of 72.5 for private-sector Web sites.

As E-government becomes more matter-of-fact, satisfaction ratings have been dulled a bit by the growth in first-time visitors to government Web sites. The proportion of first-time visitors increased by 14% in the past year. And new visitors give satisfaction ratings of 5% to 10% lower than repeat visitors, according to the study. "First-time users don't yet know their way around a site and have a hard time finding what they're looking for," says Claes Fornell, director of the university's National Center for Quality Research. "But failing to make a good first impression could be slowing the growth of E-government."

One of the main drags on overall satisfaction is the inadequacy of search functionality on some E-government sites. The sites provide volumes of useful content and good services, researchers say, but sifting through the tremendous amount of material available is a sticking point. Even Google and Microsoft struggle to provide targeted results rather than pages and pages of links that searchers have to wade through, ForeSee CEO Larry Freed says. "For E-government, the trick is to find ways to compensate for the inherent challenges that search presents, he says. "Solutions can come in different forms, depending on the type of site and its audience."

He cites the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, which maintains a repository for an enormous volume of documents and statistics. GAO redesigned its home page and site architecture to make the organization clearer and reduce the number of steps to find information. Satisfaction scores for the site increased 5 points in one year.