Monday, September 15, 2003

eGov Separation of Powers Rory Perry comments on how separation of powers should extend to egovernment.  I think Utah's websites (executive, legislative, and judicial), although the main portal certainly provides easy access to all branches of government, included local jurisdictions within the state.  At the same time, however, I can't claim that we weren't interested in having all branches use the same utah.gov header.  It didn't happen - our legislative and judicial branches are strongly independent. 3:10:38 PM    comment []

Brown Survey on Electronic Government Utah plunged to #17 in this year's Brown study on egovernment.  The researchers heaped criticism on states for developing websites that are inaccessible in terms of average readability.  According to the survey, Utah's websites are geared toward a grade level of 11.7 (higher than any other state in the country).  Rhode Island did the best in this category - its websites are geared toward a 10.1 grade level.  Brown thinks that sites should be geared toward something closer to an eighth grade reading level.  I think that this whole section of the survey is somewhat invalid unless statistics are considered that account for the literacy level of the target population.  For example, according to the latest census, 91% of Utahns over 25 completed high school compared to 80.1% of the Rhode Island population.  The survey should consider the gap between average literacy of the target population and what is actually on the website rather than a straight across comparison in order to be more valid as a criteria.  Utah also ranked very low for the number of websites transated into other languages.  I agree with this criteria, but unfortunately, a group called US English helped pass an initiative here a couple of years ago that really restricts what we can do with translation. Brown's Top Twenty States (last year's scores in parentheses): Rank State Rating Out of 100 Pts Rank State Rating Out of 100 1.(24) Massachusetts 46.3(45.6) 2.(6) Texas 43(52.8) 3.(12) Indiana 42.4(51.5) 4.(1) Tennessee 41.4(56) 5.(3) California 41.1(54.8) 6.(19) Michigan 40.6(48.2) 7.(5) Pennsylvania 40.5(52.9) 8.(11) New York 40.5(51.6) 9.(13) Florida 40.3(51.5) 10.(44) Kentucky 40(42) 11.(16) Illinois 39.7(49.3) 12.(22) Missouri 39.7(46.3) 13.(2) New Jersey 39.6(55) 14.(9) S. Dakota 39.5(51.9) 15.(32) Arizona 39.1(44.2) 16.(7) Washington 38.6(52.4) 17.(10) Utah 38.1(51.7) 18.(27) Maryland 38.1(44.9) 19.(15) Virginia 38.1(49.6) 20.(17) N. Carolina 38(48.6) Regarding Massachussetts, the survey said: Most of the sites that linked to the portal (agencies, elected officials, etc.) carried the same banner heading that provided links to the 48 online services offered, a listing of agency sites, a search option, and a link to the portal. With this heading, the user could visit any site under the Massachusetts portal and still have immediate access to all online services. Based on that, MA received a score of 25.4 online services per website.  Utah has a similar header on almost all of its websites which points to online services (a lot more than 25), but somehow received a score of only 0.7 for this category.  Something is seriously wrong with the evaluation in this area. 10:19:58 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 David Fletcher.