WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service has the nation’s
most reliable e-government Web site according to a leading private
sector company that measures Web site performance.
Keynote Systems announced today that IRS.gov is one of the first
winners of the Keynote Performance Awards, a new awards program
designed to recognize excellence in Web site performance. Keynote
honored the fastest and most reliable Web sites in three categories:
e-commerce, e-government and online travel and hospitality.
In e-government, the IRS won the performance
award for Best Transaction Reliability with an average score of
99.8 percent.
“The IRS is strongly committed to the use
of technology to help taxpayers, and taxpayers are embracing this
technology,” said IRS Commissioner Mark W. Everson. “More
than 61 million tax returns were filed electronically this year.
And IRS.gov received more than 139 million visits this year, making
it one of the government’s busiest sites.”
“We’re proud to have IRS.gov recognized
as the e-government leader in reliability,” said Jimi Stricklin,
IRS director of Web Services. “This award validates our goal
of improving service to America’s taxpayers by delivering
fast and reliable online resources and tax information.”
The award is based on Keynote’s E-Government
Web Transaction Performance Index. The index measures a visitor’s
ability to click through a number of pages on the Web site and
successfully find the needed information. Measurements were taken
between December 2003 and July 2004 every hour, seven days a week
from the nation’s 10 largest metropolitan areas. Three aspects
of each transaction were measured: accessing the site’s home
page, entering a search topic and selecting or clicking on a specific
search result. The site with the highest success rate, out of
100 percent, is recognized for the “reliability” award.
Many of IRS.gov’s most useful Web applications
are those made possible through new capabilities developed and
delivered through the IRS Business Systems Modernization Program.
The program is a multi-year effort to modernize and update the
nation’s tax administration systems.
Highlights of these new Web applications include
“Where’s My Refund?” which taxpayers can use to
find out about their tax refund and e-services, a suite of IRS.gov
tools that give tax practitioners and professionals new ways of
working with the IRS using fast, efficient and convenient online
processes.
