26 October 2001
Britain is behind the US, Taiwan, Australia and Canada, but ahead of another 191 countries.
British government websites were highly rated for the on-line publication of official reports and for the searchability of official databases, moderately well for the capability of transacting on-line, but badly for their privacy and security policies and for accessibility by people with visual and hearing disabilities.
The study criticised most governments for their failure to reassure citizens with simple privacy and security policies, and for not using audio clips to help users with visual disabilities. Only two sites (Taiwan's government portal and Ireland's Revenue Commissioners) enabled digital signatures to be used. The study also criticised the absence of government portals to allow easy user navigation between departmental websites.
It said that generally government websites were failing to adopt best practice from the corporate sector.
Detailed analysis was conducted of 2,288 national government websites.
PFoct2001
