New US E-Government Website Quality Report By ActiveStandards and WelchmanPierpoint Highlights Need for Greater Measurement on Federal Websites

Report Looks at Key Areas of Accessibility, SEO and Usability

NEW YORK & LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ActiveStandards, the leading Website Quality Management (WQM) platform, and WelchmanPierpoint, the web governance experts, today announced the publication of the first U.S. E-Government Website Quality Report, which measures the quality of federal government digital services delivered to U.S. citizens.

The report demonstrates the value of establishing a quality benchmark for federal sites by producing a measure of current performance levels, and looks at how federal sites are performing across three key quality areas: accessibility, SEO and usability. The report is based on a survey taken in Q2 2012 of 43 federal websites encompassing 8,500 site pages with each site being validated across 26 compliance checkpoints and given a Total Quality ranking based on performance. It also discusses the quality challenges federal sites face now – and those they will face in the future.

The report is particularly relevant at a time when the White House’s vision for federal information is focused on creating a 21st century digital government that is efficient, effective and focused on improving service delivery, as per the U.S. Digital Government Strategy memo presented earlier this year.

The full report can be viewed here: http://www.activestandards.com/E-Gov-Report12.

Simon Lande, CEO of ActiveStandards, said, “U.S. Federal agencies are facing a particularly challenging period when it comes to their web presence. The Federal Government is keen to use technology-driven solutions to establish consistent processes for performance and content quality measurement while reducing costs, but the present situation is a long way from these aims. Our report highlights the need for clearly defined performance measures to provide consistent quality and a government-wide view of digital services.”

Lisa Welchman, founding partner of WelchmanPierpoint, said, “Federal web managers face the practical challenge of managing the continuing migration of information and service delivery to digital channels. With a variety of internal resources touching online content daily, it’s important to have tools and data which allow agencies to monitor and manage basic content quality. We hope that our report provides actionable information that will allow federal agencies to better govern their digital channels.”

About ActiveStandards

ActiveStandards is the leading Website Quality Management (WQM) platform, used by more Global 500 companies than any other solution.

ActiveStandards’ powerful yet easy-to-use online dashboard transforms how marketing and technical teams work together to optimize the quality and compliance of their web properties and drive business growth. Our proven technology, supported by a team of web quality and compliance experts, helps enterprise, mid-market companies and government organizations streamline the governance of their digital properties, reduce operational costs, and have trust and confidence in their web content wherever it is being used. With offices in Europe, USA, India and South Africa, ActiveStandards has a rapidly growing international client base across all industry sectors, and supports the daily web management programs for some of the largest brands in the world. Clients include Unilever, Shell, CSC, HP, Canon and many more.

About WelchmanPierpoint

WelchmanPierpoint specializes in web governance development for the enterprise, higher education, and government sectors. We help organizations establish governing frameworks in order to minimize debate, confusion, and inefficiencies in the web authoring and development environment— speeding production, lowering risk, and raising web quality.

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