A Comprehensive Review of all US Government Websites
At one time or another you've probably visited a United States government website, perhaps whitehouse.gov or NASA.
According to Wikipedia .gov was one of the first top-level domains registered (1985) and is used only by the United States.
In addition to using .gov the US also uses .mil for military sites, .fed.us, .us, .com, and .org. The .gov domain has at least a billion pages of content according to the Google search "site:*.gov" (no quotes when searched) which brings up all .gov domains.
Overall, the quality of code on the sites was variable. A few had doctypes, but most didn't. Others used frames, some didn't. Most, however, used HTML 4.01 (or similar)
with tables, instead of CSS, for formatting. These sites were mostly heavyweights, a good portion of these sites were 50k or larger, enough to test the patience of a broadband user like myself, nevertheless a user on a dial-up modem.
Most of them didn't look like they needed 50k, but just that they were trying to get everything in on the first page, overwhelming the user. This needlessly increases the size of the page, and search engines are unable to "see" the text in pictures.
Another interesting discovery was
the US's Website Usability site. To begin with, it wasn't valid code, but that's not a big deal considering google.com has over forty errors. However, a more serious problem, was that all
the text headers on this site, such as menus and articles, were images:
None of these sites were especially cleanly designed either. The EPA site
cannot seem to make up it's mind on how to present data on the first page, some tables have borders, others don't. Scrolling down the page, none of the columns line up.
Also, some titles such as "Free Stuff Free" leave something to be desired.
Also disheartening was the political quality to most of these sites. The EPA has a featured article of the EPA administrator's
biography. A poll called "Test Your Enviro-Q" asks, "How many former EPA employees have become president?" which has absolutely nothing to do
with the purpose of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Consistency is also lacking, various designs and coding styles abound. Whitehouse.gov uses what looks like
six point font on it's left menu system. I think it would be much better if all of these sites were governed by some basic
design rules to usability and accessibility.
There are bright spots in this bloated mass of sites. The Library of Congress site is right at the
sweet spot for size at about 10k and is coded in XHTML 1.0 Transitional. It doesn't validate completely, but it does respond quickly due to its lightweight design and,
unlike almost all of the other websites it makes effective use of whitespace.
Still many of the .gov sites are picture heavy. Don't take me the wrong way, pictures are very important for many web experiences, but many of these
pictures are eye-candy, aren't explained, and often have nothing to do with the content. Firstgov.gov, the oddly
named official web portal of the US government, has a picture of a young girl and white haired man at a computer. This is located next to a section
about "Citizens: Get it Done." Does it add anything to the content? No. The only thing it adds to is the end users' load time and the server load.
It reminds me of the Everywhere Girl featured on The Inquirer that has shown up on literally hundreds of websites
as a stock photograph of a girl.
Conclusion
It may be a little optimistic to say that I expected better, but just like the rest of the Internet, US government websites grew awkwardly. However, these sites do have to
deal with the enormous amount of information and services that the US government offers, which can sometimes be extremely eclectic. However, a good portion of these sites are bloated, mal-formed, and
darn right hard to sue for change... sorry ...use. Anyway, I give the whole .gov domain suffix receives a score of D- to B+, on a scale from A to F, most falling somewhere in the C- range.
Kevin C. May 13th 2006 kcas88@gmail.com
Updated - May 27th 2006
Updated - July 4th 2006
Google or Goooooogle?
