OMB e-Government Scorecard Lacks Essential Citizens' Perspective, Says Report by ForeSee Results.

Citizen Satisfaction with e-Government Plateaus For the Year After Slight Gain in Fourth Quarter

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- One month after the Office of Management and Budget issued the fourth quarter scorecard with mixed results for the President's Management Agenda, the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) e-Government Satisfaction Index released fourth quarter scores that show only slight improvement and a stagnating trend. Aggregate citizen satisfaction with the 87 federal websites measured improved 0.3 percent from last quarter to 73.9 on the ACSI's 100-point scale. However, the fourth quarter score is unchanged from one year ago. Over the past year, the aggregate e-government satisfaction score has varied by just a half point, after three years of sustained increases.

E-government is one of the five main initiatives measured in the OMB's quarterly scorecard, but ACSI partner ForeSee Results says the rating is incomplete if it does not reflect citizen satisfaction, because satisfaction is the critical factor in achieving widespread e-government adoption that will streamline delivery of services, improve quality and attain cost-savings.

"As a former CTO, I can tell you that standards, compliance and security are all good things, but a scorecard based only on these components is missing the citizens' perception of the web experience," said Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results and author of the ACSI E-Government report. "The most crucial factor in whether e-government will achieve its promise is whether citizens feel it meets their needs and expectations - if not, they'll stick with more expensive and less convenient ways of dealing with the government. And the only way to know if you're meeting those goals is through measurement based on direct citizen feedback."

Compounding the challenges to e-government is that citizen expectations are influenced by the private sector. Citizen expectations are shaped by the sum total of other websites they visit - from Amazon.com to their online banking sites, not only government websites. Amid budgetary constraints, it can be particularly difficult for e-government to keep pace with the deep pockets of the private sector in terms of innovation and improvement.

Comparing functional categories, government websites remained within striking distance of their private sector counterparts also measured by the ACSI. The category of government portals and department main sites scored 74.9, a 0.1 percent increase from last quarter, but 1 percent higher year-over-year. This puts e-government 1.4 percent behind private sector Portals (76). In the News and Information sites category, e-gov scored 72.9 (+0.3% from third quarter and +0.5% year-over-year), virtually even with private sector peers, which dropped 2.7 percent last year to 73.