Before giving websites the ax, feds should consider public satisfaction, analyst says

A task force charged with slashing and rationalizing the federal government's Web presence should look at traffic, redundancy and user satisfaction as it decides which sites should get the ax, an analytic agency recommended Tuesday.

The company, ForeSee Results, manages the E-Government Satisfaction Index, a quarterly survey of customer satisfaction with participating federal websites.

The White House has embarked on a major campaign to slash and consolidate the more than 20,000 government websites that have sprung up since the 1990s.

Many of those websites were built around a specific issue or initiative and are now rarely visited and poorly maintained. Other websites are visited more often but were built with distinct architecture so it's difficult for casual Web surfers to tell what's official and what's not.