Evaluating the Performance, Quality and Accessibility of Ghanaian Government Portals Using Diagnostic Tools

Abstract

In today's world, e-government has become an increasingly important aspect of public administration. With the widespread use of the internet, many governments have developed websites and portals to provide services and information to citizens. However, the success of these e-government programs depends on several critical factors, such as accessibility, quality, and efficiency. This research evaluated 20 e-government websites and portals in Ghana using a set of industry-standard Web diagnostic tools (TAW3 and Google PageSpeed Insights and W3C Web Validators). The results are presented in this paper. The findings show that none of the evaluated sites meet the recommended Priority AA conformance standard, and there are significant weaknesses in accessibility, quality, and performance. Most of the websites did not follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)'s robust, perceivable, operable, and understandable principles, which resulted in non-compliance problems like slow page loads and broken connections. These results underline the necessity of substantial enhancements to Ghana's e-government websites' usability, effectiveness, and efficiency to improve the citizen experience and guarantee the success of e-government initiatives.