Over 920 govt websites fail quality audit

Over 920 websites of various central government departments have failed in quality certification forcing the Centre to issue 115-point parameters for strict compliance by them.
All central government secretaries have been asked to ensure that there is up-to-date governance related information on the websites and no "page under construction" links.
"The government is striving hard for implementation of the agenda 'minimum government and maximum governance' and 'Digital India' for making governance citizen friendly in the country.
"Recently, the Standard Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) Directorate had done the audit of 957 government websites and it was found that only 31 of them were Guidelines of Indian Government Websites (GIGW) compliant," said C Viswanath, Secretary, Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG).

This means a total of 926 websites have failed in quality parameters by STQC office.
The implementation of the GIGW guidelines by all the government entities in a time-bound manner will go a long way in improving governance in the country, he said.

In a strong-worded communique to all secretaries, Viswanath said the DARPG has been "repeatedly addressing" ministries through various letters, meetings and workshops on the need of getting their websites GIGW compliant. Cabinet Secretary has also written to you ministry or department, he said.
Internationally recognised STQC Directorate, under the
Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, provides quality certification to government websites based on national and international standards and best practises.

All the secretaries have been asked to ensure that the websites are bilingual.
Under the 115 matrices for departments to check their websites are compliant with required standard, they need to have a mechanism to ensure that there are no broken links.
The government departments have to ensure that national identity symbols like flag, national emblem etc., are in a proper ratio and colour.
"All possible security measures have been taken to prevent defacement or hacking of the website and the department has contingency plan in place for situations like these," reads one of the parameters.
It need to be ensured that website ranks in the first five results on major search engines when searched with relevant keywords.

Besides, all departments have to ensure that there are no links to "under construction" pages on their websites.
Secretaries have to ensure that websites are accessible to the intended audience in an efficient and secure manner on 24x7 basis and that "the website has been tested on multiple browsers".
They have to make sure that website is free from offensive or discriminatory language and a mechanism to ensure that all outdated announcements are removed from the portal or moved to archive.