Visitors to Utah.gov, the state’s official government website, can feel fairly confident their personal information is safe, at least compared to the websites of other states.
A report released Monday by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, or ITIF, — a D.C.-based technology policy think tank — ranked Utah first in the nation for the security features of its state websites. And Utah’s website ranked 17th overall based on factors like loading speeds and formatting features for mobile devices and users with disabilities.
“Government websites should be fast, secure, mobile-friendly, and accessible to everyone,” ITIF vice president Daniel Castro said in a prepared statement. “But many states' websites are failing to meet industry best practices.”
Michael McLaughlin, an ITIF research assistant and the report’s co-author, said eight websites from each state were tested for the rankings. The websites included the main government domain for each state — like Utah.gov — as well as subsidiary pages for driver licensing, taxing, vital records, elections, business registration, fishing and hunting licensing and traffic citation.
Subsidiary pages were identified by entering the topic areas and state names into an internet search engine, McLaughlin said, to imitate how a typical user would access government websites.
“What would a typical person do if they wanted to get their driver license, their fishing and hunting license, or register a business?” McLaughlin said.
Utah earned high marks for its ubiquitous use of hypertext transfer protocol secure connections, or HTTPS, on government websites. That type of connection, McLaughlin said, includes authentication and encryption that prevents digital “eavesdropping” when a user is online.
“If a website is using that, then a user can feel comfortable inputting their credit card information and other personal information into that website,” he said.
David Fletcher, chief technology officer for Utah’s Department of Technology Services, said the state made a deliberate effort in recent years to implement an https-only standard for government websites.
He said there are still “a few things to clean up,” but that most Utah government departments have successfully moved to https connections.
“We want to ensure the privacy and security of our users,” Fletcher said. “We’ve made a significant effort to try and ensure that is the case.”
Utah was also in the top 10 for the mobile-friendliness of its government websites, according to the report. But it was near the middle of the pack for its accessibility for users with physical disabilities, and in the bottom 25 states for page-load speeds.
Fletcher said the ITIF report is useful and highlights specific areas of potential improvement. He said the state has already updated its tax website — tax.utah.gov — since the study was conducted, and that ITIF researchers may have landed on the wrong pages while searching for Utah sites.
“We need to look at our search-engine optimization there,” he said. “We want to make sure that people are getting to the right page.”
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