IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Keynote Systems and Federal Computer Week announced yesterday the Keynote Government 40 Internet Performance Index (KG40), which provides a benchmark for comparison and sets a standard for the performance and availability of key federal government Web sites. Federal Computer Week will publish the KG40 Index, updated weekly, in its print edition starting today, and online at fcw.com. Keynote will also publish the index on its site. In the first two weeks of results for the Keynote Government 40 Index, the Web sites for the FBI, Library of Congress and the Supreme Court were the fastest, in first, second and third places respectively for both weeks. All three averaged sub-second response times for users accessing their home pages, as did the sites of the House of Representatives and the Environmental Protection Agency. FirstGov, in fourth place the first week, slipped to eighth place last week based on its performance average, but availability was very poor, at 70.7% the first week and 70.48% last week - the worst of all sites on the Index. The White House and Security Exchange Commission's sites were also among the top 10 sites for both weeks.

"E-government has become the driver for improving the way government works and how it delivers services to the public," said Allan Holmes, editor in chief of Federal Computer Week. "The Keynote index for the first time establishes a performance standard and gives federal government site operators a valuable measure of how well they are servicing their online customers."

"The KG40 Index gives government organizations a benchmark against which to compare the performance of their own sites," said Bill Jones, Senior director of Public Services at Keynote. "Keynote's Indexes have become the industry standards for business, general consumer, and brokerage site performance, as well as for streaming content. We have a strong partner in Federal Computer Week that establishes the KG40 Index as the Web site performance standard in the government sector."

Navy.mil was the worst performing site on the Index, averaging 9.35 seconds last week and 11.38 the week before. Rounding out the bottom of the Index for both weeks are those of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Air Force, the National Park Service, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration - all averaging over 6.0 seconds. The site for the Social Security Administration consistently delivered content errors that prevented the page from downloading completely, which may or may not inhibit further navigation by users.

The ranking of several sites jumped dramatically from one week to the next: the FAA's site moved from ninth place to 19th when its performance more than doubled, from 0.95 to 2.07 seconds; the Department of Education's site improved considerably, from 33 to 20 on the list; and the Department of Energy's site from 25 to 33 with average performance of 4.64 seconds, an increase of 87.8% from the previous week.

The overall KG40 Index average of 2.65 seconds last week is comparable to the 2.62 second performance average of 40 important business Web sites on the Keynote Business 40 Index, which measures overall health and performance of the Internet as experienced by users accessing business sites from work.

For more complete results, visit the URLs listed above.

Quelle: The Web Hosting Industry