Government websites are to get a new set of national performance indicators to compare how well they perform against other sites, it transpires.

The 'Web Performance Management Framework' (PMF) as it is called is currently being developed by the Cabinet Office's Contact Council unit.

Details of the work were disclosed in new government web guidelines published by the Central Office of Information on 1st June.

The Web PMF, says the COI, is intended to 'enable senior management teams to review performance against their peers, and thus encourage continuous improvement within and between web sites'.  It will also 'allow for more standardised comparison of service delivery across channels; on the web, face-to-face, and contact centres.'

The document will form part of a 'suite' of PMFs intended, it says, 'to provide an invaluable toolkit for cross channel service delivery managers within Departments, Authorities and the broader public sector.'

The 'Web PMF' will thus sit alongside the Contact Council's 'Contact Centres PMF' which was published in late 2007 and sets out a list of performance indicators every publicly-funded call centre is meant to report back on each quarter.

We asked the Cabinet Office if it could confirm when the Web PMF was expected to be released, and whether this time a draft version would be made available for public consultation prior to its publication.  We have not yet heard back.

The Contact Council aims to develop a further PMF dealing with face-to-face contact during 2009-10', says the guidelines.

The COI documentation, which set out new procedures for measuring website quality, follows the COI's recent 'Improving Government Online Review' and online consultation to which 44 people, mainly Whitehall web folk, responded.

This Review is designed to act on long-running issues highlighted by the National Audit Office's Government Web Report in July 2007.  Sir John Bourn, the-then NAO chief,  commented at the time: "When I last reported on this subject in 2002 I reported weaknesses in information across government on the cost and usage of its websites. Today's report highlights that little improvement has been made in these areas."

The NAO found, among other things, that a third of government bodies had 'very little knowledge' about the cost of their websites while 60% could not report the number of unique visitors.  The upshot of this is COI have now produced a single set of website quality measures, available here, which all departments and agencies are supposed to follow.

"The Web PMF will start with and build upon the core measures proposed in this document', says the COI guidance, which is aimed at central government audience.

What the COI proposes is to put in place, for the first time, a structured process whereby government bodies will systematically supply details about website costs, usage and user satisfaction data as set out in the guidance. Importantly, these will be measured in a consistent way.  This data, says the guidance, will 'allow assessment of the overall quality and value delivered by government websites'.

The guidance stipulates departments must carry out an online of users of every website they operate at least once a year, with figures reported annually.  Each survey must also follow a given structure, with a standard set of questions worded and ordered exactly as set out in the document. Departments must complete one such user satisfaction survey by March.

The document says that 'central government departments must measure Unique User/Browsers, Page Impressions, Visits and Visit Duration starting from 1 April 2009 for every website open on 1 April 2010', as well as provide COI with details of annual website costs for the past financial year.  Agencies and Non-Departmental Public Bodies have an extra year to comply.

All current government websites have until the end of this year to achieve 'AA' accessibility as measured against Version 1 of the WCAG Guidelines, it reaffirms.

It is not stated what the COI will specifically do with the collected data, other than suggesting this would allow cross-government benchmarking and promote best practice.

And here's the link to those guidelines again.