A new report details that the US federal government operates 11, 013 Web sites, own at least 1,489 .gov domains of which 804 of them are functional. Another 400 .gov domains redirect to other government Web sites, 265 don’t work and 20 are under development. Agencies report using a total of 150 different systems for creating and publishing web content and 250 Web hosting providers with an average of 10 web hosting providers per agency. (sketchy.. see below. 35% of domains are hosted externally )

The data, published in a report issued late last week by the General Services Administration and Office of Management and Budget, was compiled between August and October. The report cautions that the number of domains and websites fluctuates as agencies eliminate, consolidate or create them.

The report estimated that agencies operate about 11,013 Web sites, but notes that a definitive tally is difficult to obtain as many sites function as subdomains of a top level domain. Nasa.gov for example, contains the agency’s main site and numerous others for individual projects, missions and agency offices.

Regarding domain names, agencies reported that they plan to continue operating about 70 percent of the government’s .gov domains; 26 percent of the domains are expected to be eliminated in the coming months. while 4 percent will be redirected to other sites.

The number of domains owned by federal agencies varied from 160 at the Treasury Department to just two for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Five agencies own more than 100: Treasury, the departments of Health and Human Services and Commerce, the General Services Administration and the Interior Department. Of those, HHS, Interior and Commerce operate the most active domains, while Treasury owns 67 inactive domains, the report said.

And who visits federal Web sites most often? Well that would be federal employees. Among primary users of the 804 active domains, the report said 63 percent are federal workers, followed by researchers and the press.

KEY TAKEAWAY 

Content Management Systems (CMS)

- Almost all have a CMS, but use many different systems: All but one agency reported using a CMS; many different systems are used across the 24 major agencies. Agencies referred to 150 separate implementations of 42 different systems.

- Custom-built systems: Twelve agencies reported some sort of custom-built or in- house CMS.

- Exact number of CMS is unknown: Some agencies commented that the true number of CMS in use across the agency is unknown.

Web Hosting Providers

- Multiple web hosting providers in each agency: Most agencies reported using multiple hosting providers, with an average of 12 providers per agency.

- In-house hosting: Thirteen out of 24 major agencies (or 54%) reported that at least some websites are hosted internally.

- Growth anticipated due to cloud computing: Two of the major agencies (or 8%) expect additional growth in external web hosting providers due to the rise of cloud computing.

- Exact number of web hosting providers is unknown: Six out of 24 agencies (or 25%) stated that the true number of web hosting providers in use across the agency is unknown.

Another key takeaways on performance states:

Most agencies rated the performance of their websites as 'excellent' or 'good': On nearly every question related to key performance indicators, approximately 80% of websites were rated by agencies as excellent/good. The highest rated item was "meets Federal web requirements." For this item, 87% of websites were rated as excellent/good.

Second opinions

HostJury decided to get a second opinion. Figuring that if Nasa can put a man on the moon, how hard could it be to put a site on the web! It isn't rocket science.

Nasa.gov has a google pagerank of 9 and an alexa ranking in the mid 700 range. Historically there has not been a lot of competition for the keyword search terms.

Using GTmetrix, we evaluated the Nasa.gov website... the screenshot says it all:

On the speed side though, just ping, an online tool that pings a domain from 50 locations worldwide returned some pretty good results for nasa.gov. Nasa obviously has less difficulty flying around the world!