Riverhead Town’s website is one of only six government sites in the State of New York to earn better than a C on a report card issued yesterday by the nonprofit Empire Center for Public Policy in Albany.
The Empire Center, publisher of the See Through New York website, reviewed and scored the websites of the 500 largest counties, municipalities and school districts in New York, using a 10-item rubric to test them for the type and amount of information published, as well as ease of navigation.
Eighty-five percent of the websites reviewed in the study failed to earn a passing grade.
Riverhead scored a 118 out of 146 possible points, or 81 percent, earning it a B — along with just five other government websites statewide. No government website earned an A. The highest score in the state was 122, earned by the Town of Penfield.
“Except for a small — but notable — group of outliers, local governments and school districts are not providing clear or comprehensive or even the most basic information on their websites,” the report concluded. “What could and should be useful, powerful tools for taxpayers are very much underutilized.”
“Wow, I’m really impressed with that,” Supervisor Sean Walter said when told of Riverhead’s report card score. “I know we try to put as much information up on our website as we possibly can,” he said.
Riverhead Town hired Municipal CMS of Smithville, Missouri in 2011 to develop a new website for a fee of $15,000.
The city, town, village and county websites were tested for ease of navigation and for posting the following types of information:
adequacy of contact information for elected officials, department heads and senior staff;
notice and minutes of public meetings;
information about accessing public information;
current and past budget documents;
current and past audited financial reports;
employee collective bargaining agreements, employment and vendor contracts and RFPs;
information regarding taxes and fees;
payroll and expenditure data; and
information on services provided by the municipality.
Riverhead’s website earned the highest number of possible points for posting public meeting information, budgets and financial reports and information about expenditures, categories in which most government websites came up short, according to the report.
Its site rated a 9 out 10 for ease of navigation, a category in which only 28 percent of the websites received a passing grade.
Riverhead’s poorest scores came in the categories of providing information on public access to records under the Freedom of Information Law (4 out of 12) and posting municipal contracts online (10 out of 22.)
The Town of Huntington, with 117 points, was the only other municipality on Long Island to also earn a B; the average score for Long Island municipalities was a dismal 48 percent. Southold and Brookhaven each got an F, while Southampton scored a C and East Hampton, a D. Suffolk County’s website scored 111 points, earning a C on the report card.
The Riverhead Central School District website was not among the 180 school districts graded by the Empire Center for the study.
“Most of the 500 local government and school district websites we reviewed between July and September of 2014 need major improvements before they will be providing citizens with all the public information to which they are entitled,” the report said. “Fortunately, as highlighted in this report, there are some good examples to follow.”
See the full “Local Government Website Report Card“
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