The State Legislature Online Tech Landscape

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1 The State Legislature Online Tech Landscape A comparison of legislature and SaaS websites shows stark differences

2 State legislature websites lag behind web standards An analysis of 54 state legislature websites shows that the technology they utilize trails industry standards significantly. A majority, 35 (65%), are programmed in ASP.NET and running on IIS servers both, usually paired, are Microsoft technologies. This differs greatly from standards seen in leading software as a service (SaaS) companies and that s only the beginning. Legislature sites are less likely to be mobile-friendly, less likely to use analytical tools, less likely to use secure protocols, and less likely to implement any front-end enhancements. Ultimately, these shortcomings negatively affect users. Background In June 2015, inspired by our work at FiscalNote, I independently conducted research into the web technologies employed by 972 leading SaaS companies. These companies employ web technologies as their business; it s their objective to be innovative, and to abide by the best practices employed in modern web design. While these organizations could be seen as the gold standard for web development, the findings become stark when compared to an industry known for a poor online experience government. Using data collected by BuiltWith.com, I analyzed information for 54 state legislature web sites in the United States. Server-side technology Framework A framework is a technology that is used to build a website from a development perspective, according to the BuiltWith definition. These languages run on a 1

3 website s server and build the structure of a website. They interact with a database in order to dynamically display content. BuiltWith s analysis of the entire internet shows PHP as the most popular framework, closely followed by ASP.NET the Microsoft technology. When narrowed to the internet s top 10,000 websites, that gap grows significantly larger, showing that more highly-trafficked sites favor PHP. The results of SaaS industry leaders show an even greater gap 58% of sites use PHP and 6% use ASP.NET. Legislatures, however, show a much heavier reliance on ASP.NET, with 65% using the language and only 13% using PHP. Whereas nearly 9% of SaaS companies utilized Ruby on Rails, no legislatures employed this language. (Ruby is favored by the application developer community.) Other frameworks include Flash and J2EE. 2

4 SSL Security A growing number of websites are employing the https protocol for encrypted data transfers. To activate this protocol, a server must have an SSL Certificate installed. Analysis found 72.3% of SaaS companies employed this measure for securing their users activity. Only six state legislature sites (11.1%) took this step. For businesses processing credit card transactions, SSL encryption certainly makes sense. By masking the information being sent from browser to server, private details cannot be interpreted by anyone attempting to intercept the data. However, any website can benefit from the trust a secure connection can give the site s users especially a government website. Installation of an SSL certificate involves server knowledge, but for those who understand the command line it can be a fairly simple and impactful process. Front-end technology Mobile CSS The term responsive design applies to the practice of building a site to fit the width of any browser or device. A website scales and content reflows to eliminate horizontal scroll bars and create a better user experience. This technique is most often accomplished using a form of code named media queries. An additional line of code which indicates responsive programming is the viewport meta tag. This tag tells a browser whether is should shrink the content to fit the screen. BuiltWith data for these state legislature websites showed 4 of 54 (7.4%) using a media query, while 14 (25.9%) were using the viewport tag. For leading SaaS companies, 74.5% were using media queries and 77% have a viewport meta tag. In May, Google reported that mobile 3

5 search traffic passed searches on desktop in the US for the first time. This underscores the need for websites to be accessible on mobile devices. Responsive design first became popular in 2012; over the last three years it has become the default approach to web design. JavaScript When legislature websites utilize technology for enhancements, they are most likely to use the JavaScript library jquery to do so; 31 sites (57%) had the tool installed. While 42 unique JavaScript tools were detected on the 54 websites, few were used more than a handful of times. Modernizr was the second-most frequent tool used, found on 7 (13%) of legislature websites. This tool detects a browser s capabilities and allows a developer to deliver a suitable website to outdated browsers while also taking advantage of 4

6 modern techniques. In total, 33 websites were using some JavaScript tool, with an average of three tools installed per site. In our SaaS sample, jquery was nearly ubiquitous with 83.5% using the tool. An average of nearly nine tools were found on these websites, showing a greater reliance in the technology world. JavaScript, however, is a feature than can be disabled by users within their browsers. Web programmers employing best practices use progressive enhancement in order to allow their website to work without JavaScript. When a user is able to render JavaScript, the language only makes the site more advanced. Government websites often have a mandate to make their content fully accessible; avoiding JavaScript entirely is a simple way to accomplish this, but at the expense of user experience. Widgets Legislatures don t use much else to enhance their websites. The leading tool in BuiltWith s widget category was the Google Font API, installed on four sites. The Google Font API allows developers to choose a non-standard dynamic font to load with a website; offering greater design customization and, if chosen correctly, a more readable font. By comparison, 58% of SaaS websites use Google Fonts; an additional 15% use Typekit, a paid font service. Usage of custom fonts does lead to greater load times for websites, but is an example of design as a priority. Analytical Tools While 80% of SaaS websites use Google Analytics to understand user behavior, less than 50% of state legislatures have tracking code installed. Two legislature sites use WebTrends while one uses Piwik. Both of these services are similar to Google Analytics. This leaves 26 sites without any form of 5

7 analytics. While the majority of SaaS websites used multiple tools, only one legislature Florida uses two tools. For any organization that wants to better understand their users, analytical tools are crucial. First and foremost, they tell website managers which pages are most popular and how users are navigating their site. Analytics can also tell you who is uding the site where they are from, what device they are using and how often they visit. This helps inform data-driven decision-making a component to any user-centric website. If a manager would like a certain section to get more use, they can address the points of entry to this section throughout the site. Additionally, analytical tools can help identify issues with search engine optimization (SEO). In addition to user behavior, 30% of SaaS websites are using a tool for site optimization analysis. Optimizing a site involves 6

8 which language most appeals to users or which button design encourages a user to click. No legislature is using optimization tools. Optimizely is the most popular of these tools for SaaS companies. Content Management Systems Only nine state legislatures had an identified CMS (16%) far fewer than the 48% of SaaS websites using a CMS. Their choice in CMS also differs greatly. Five legislatures use iapps, while only one of 973 SaaS companies used iapps. That s 9% compared to 0.1%; clearly a market difference. The reverse is also applicable. While a significant amount of SaaS sites use WordPress as their CMS, no legislatures used WordPress. The second-most used CMS by legislatures was Drupal, with two. Without a CMS, web managers would need to create a template file for each web page. Changes may need to be made by modifying source code. Among other benefits, a CMS allows for a website to become easily scalable. Content can be created without touching code. Site Speed The average state legislature homepage weighs 949 kb and requires users to make 40 server requests. Using Dulles, VA, as a testing location via webpagetest. org, load time averaged 3.3 seconds while visible portions of the page loaded in 2.4 seconds. A maxim in the web industry is that user attention begins to wane after three seconds, leaving most legislatures in good territory. However, six sites took more than six seconds to load. This in an area in which less JavaScript and less styling benefits legislatures their home pages require less data usage by users. According to HTTP Archive analysis, the average page weight for all websites across the Internet was 2131 kb in June 2015, making 101 server requests. For legislatures, only five were heavier, and only one made more requests. 7

9 Still, these are averages are not ideal. With more users on mobile, lighter web pages are a great benefit to users. Conclusion Above all else, usability is the most important factor in developing a website. A project by the U.S. Department of State analyzing traffic on embassy websites determined that visa information was the most demanded content by users. The Department prioritized this content in a redesign in order to better serve their users; in doing so, it paired related information and helped users become more engaged. Legislatures that prioritize user experience will allow them to better understand the objectives of the state s inhabitants. Some of these enhancements would require significant resources many legislature websites need a full web redesign, and should be built on a CMS. Others involve one simple step adding analytics code and installing an SSL certificate. Compared with the resources being devoted by every other sector, users are expecting a much better experience. It s time for state governments to step up and devote the resources necessary to meet these expectations. Resources Full SaaS analysis: Speed Test: Sunlight Foundation 2013 Report Card: Find out how FiscalNote can help you. Sign up for a seven-day free trial at or contact@fiscalnote.com for more information.