	Best Practice Website Assessments
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Our Services

The services of e-Gov Watch are concerned with the quality assessment of government websites. They comprise:

Our Assessment Process:

Full Website Assessment

The Full Website Assessment includes the web guidelines assessment and is focused on whether users are able to access the information and services they require quickly and easily. It covers the full e-Gov Watch criteria including information and service delivery and consultation and cross organisation integration. It is the most cost effective review for many organisations.

Any issues identified through the Assessment will have comments and example web pages to enable you as an organisation to improve your site. A scoring for compliance with the Government Web Standards & Recommendations is included within this assessment. The site being assessed is rated against all the reviews completed so the government agency is aware of how their performance compares to other government agencies. Where the site rates in the top 10 of government sites or the top 10 in any criteria the results are published on this site every two months.

Compliance Advice Report

The Compliance Advice Report prioritises and describes the top 50 issues identified during the Full Website Assessment. For each issue we outline the severity of the problem, the implications to users and remedial action recommended. The benefits to agencies of this report are the transparent identification of the key issues for online delivery improvement and the cost-effectiveness of the resulting advice. This report also includes a section for non-technical people and is aimed at the strategically important issues facing the particular website.

Government Web Standards and Recommendations Assessment

The New Zealand Government Web Standards and Recommendations v2.0 applies to any web site that is intended for the public and financed by the public through the Crown or through public agencies. Some organisations may wish to be assessed only against this minimum standard. This assessment identified all issues preventing full compliance with the Standards are identified for resolution, with comments and examples. It covers both Required Government Content and Accessibility.

Government Web Standards and Recommendations Compliance Advice Report

This report prioritises and describes the issues found during the website assessment. It includes description of the specific issues found, what the implications of the issues are and how to fix them.

Structural Website Assessment

This is a review of the structural elements of a site for Accessibility and Usability and is typically conducted relatively early in the website development before most site content is published. This allows action to be taken before the structural elements are set in place.

Supplementary Website Assessment

If an agency wants to make changes following a Website Assessment and has tracked the changes against the original Assessment we can re-review the site against the changes made. This is a low cost service offered to existing clients to enable them to review and refine their site and reflect these changes in their ratings.

To inquire about any of these services or pricing for your website, please contact us.

What is an e-Gov Watch Assessment?

E-Gov Watch's main offering is the quality assessment of government websites against its comprehensive set of best government online practices criteria. The assessment criteria are wide ranging and apply to all government sites.

The criteria are grouped into the following nine criteria areas;

Criteria Areas	No. of Criteria Elements	Source of Criteria
Required Government Content	39 criteria	Government Web Standards & Recommendations, version 2.0
Accessibility	78 criteria	Government Web Standards & Recommendations, version 2.0
Usability	136 criteria	Best practices in website usability applicable to e-government
Information Delivery	13 criteria for each Information Item (typically 5 to 15 Information Items per website)	Information Items from planning documents, websites of comparable organisations, Estimates of Appropriations plus website content
e-Services Delivery	16 criteria for each e-Service (typically 0 to 12 e-Services per website)	Service Items from planning documents, websites of comparable organisations, Estimates of Appropriations plus website content
Personalisation	20 criteria	Best practices in personalisation applicable to e-government
Cross-Organisation Integration	14 criteria	Best practices in cross-organisation integration applicable to e-government
Feedback	6 criteria	Best practices in feedback applicable to e-government
e-Consultation	31 criteria for each consultation offered in the last year	Best e-government practices in e-consultation

Expert assessors evaluate the website assessed, rate the site on a 0 to 10 scale against each of the criteria and add comments and links to examples of issues where relevant. Each of the criteria is weighted for importance. The combination of ratings and weightings are summed up to a score out of 100 for each criteria area.

Each criteria area is also weighted for importance relative to the type of government organisation. For example, policy agencies may not have significant scope for e-services delivery but a greater need for e-consultation.

Government organisations with multiple websites can get each site assessed individually as well as an aggregate overall rating for comparison with other organisations.

The criteria, ratings, comments and weightings are delivered in the form of an Excel workbook with separate worksheets for each criteria area and a summary page. This digital format allows clients to see the calculations clearly and to follow the example web links back to the source of issues found. Each worksheet is also formatted for printing.

How Long do the Assessments take?

Full assessments typically take five working days to complete with faster reviews available upon discussion.

What is our Methodology?

An e-Gov Watch assessment generally takes between 7 working days depending on the complexity of the site. The steps in the assessment process are:

You approve the assessment we undertake the review.
We ask you provide any access passwords or dummy profiles we need to undertake a full analysis of your site. Once those access keys or profiles are provided we will take between 7-10 days to review your site and complete any reports.
We carry out the review against the 500+ criteria and present the results to you against our nine criteria areas. Where there are issues or problems we will provide a brief description of the problem and if you purchase the compliance report we will recommend how the problem could be addressed. We then quality assure the Assessment before sending it to you
You have an agreed time period (usually 2-3 weeks) to review our findings and come back to us to clarify any findings, discuss any items you disagree with and to finalise the results
We take any remedial action required to finalise the results and together we agree on your results. We will inform you of your ranking against other agencies and best in criteria rankings.
We discuss publishing your results if you are in the top 10 results.

What are the Benefits of an e-Gov Watch Assessment?

The benefits of an e-Gov Watch website assessment are;

Clear and specific guidance of where potential problems are to be found in your website
Support in justification of bids for resources to expand online capabilities
Ability to compare website quality with other government organisations and gauge relative performance
Expert assessment independent from development interests
Assessment against both the minimum standards (Government Web Standards & Recommendations) and best e-government practices
Cost effective way of reviewing and identifying key strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in your website

When is the best time to get your website assessed?

The best times to get an e-Gov Watch website assessment are;

To support or justify the redevelopment of a website, in the sense of an independent review creating a case for change

During a major redevelopment to check the quality of the site and allowing the opportunity to remedy any issues found (especially during an external developerâ??s warrantee period)

At any time to establish a regular benchmark of improvement

Are our sevices available internationally?

We are beginning to offer our services internationally. We tailor our criteria to the local government criteria available in each country and to suit different types of government agencies be they federal, state or local organisation. We also tailor our criteria to the type of organisation for example whether they are policy or service delivery organisations. We will tailor our criteria to meet your type of organisation while at the same time maintaining integrity within our criteria to enable cross organisational comparison.

Pricing

The prices for assessments and related services for individual websites are;

e-Gov Watch Services	Price per site* (excl GST)
Full Website Assessment	$4,500
Compliance Advice Report - Full Assessment	$2,000
Supplementary Website Assessment	Depends upon the extent of changes made
Government Web Standards & Recommendations Assessment	$2,000
Compliance Advice Report - Government Web Standards & Recommendations Assessment	$1,000

* All prices are based on websites of 'normal' size and complexity. Very large or complex sites may be subject to an additional cost on a case by case basis. Similarly, very small sites may be eligible for a discounted price. Assessments of multiple sites are also eligible for discounted rates. Please contact us to discuss pricing options.

All enquiries for countries outside New Zealand should contact us to enquire about relevant pricing and assessment standards.