Central governments websites report and rankings

Overview of findings

Top of the league and best site overall was The Child Support Agency (www.csa.gov.uk). At the bottom of the table, representing the poorest site overall, was The Department of Trade and Industry (www.dti.gov.uk).

Website Function

No site was error free this month and 9 sites had 10 errors or less. The site with the highest number of error occurrences was The Office of Fair Trading (www.oft.gov.uk) with nearly 3,000.

Website Compliance

Accessibility ñ 17 sites scored 100% and 40 sites scored 90% on the automated tests, looking at the requirements of Priority 1 (A) accessibility. 7 sites had less than 1% compliance when tested against the mandatory requirements for Priority 1 accessibility.

HTML ñ The site with the lowest number of warnings [HTML standards compliance within the requirements laid down by W3C and IETF] was The Child Support Agency (www.csa.gov.uk) with 4. HM Customs and Excise (www.hmce.gov.uk) had the poorest HTML, with nearly 41,000 failures.

The range of tests [Web Accessibility Initiative WAI] that can be completed automatically are limited, 100% compliance with the automated tests does not mean 100% compliance with the requirements.

Website Performance

26 sites passed all basic speed tests, looking at first page download and simulated as being viewed by users with home [56k] and ADSL [512k] access.

The site with the fastest response time was Innovation (www.innovation.gov.uk); Scotland (www.scotland.gov.uk) had the slowest response time, and was 789 times slower than Innovation.

The site with the fastest download speed was The Cabinet Office (www.e-government.cabinetoffice.gov.uk); Scotland (www.scotland.gov.uk) had the slowest download speed and was 349 times slower than The Cabinet Office.