The State

Legislature Online
Tech Landscape
A comparison of legislature and SaaS
websites shows stark differences

www.fiscalnote.com

State legislature websites lag

behind web standards
An analysis of 54 state legislature websites shows that the technology they
utilize trails industry standards significantly. A majority, 35 (65%), are programmed
in ASP.NET and running on IIS servers
both, usually paired, are Microsoft technologies. This differs greatly from standards seen in leading software as a service (SaaS) companies and thats only
the beginning.
Legislature sites are less likely to be mobile-friendly, less likely to use analytical
tools, less likely to use secure protocols,
and less likely to implement any front-end
enhancements. Ultimately, these shortcomings negatively affect users.

These companies employ web technologies as their business; its their objective
to be innovative, and to abide by the best
practices employed in modern web design.
While these organizations could be seen
as the gold standard for web development, the findings become stark when
compared to an industry known for a
poor online experience government.
Using data collected by BuiltWith.com, I
analyzed information for 54 state legislature web sites in the United States.

Server-side technology

Background

Framework

In June 2015, inspired by our work at

FiscalNote, I independently conducted
research into the web technologies employed by 972 leading SaaS companies.

A framework is a technology that is used

to build a website from a development
perspective, according to the BuiltWith
definition. These languages run on a

www.fiscalnote.com/resources

websites server and build the structure of

a website. They interact with a database
in order to dynamically display content.
BuiltWiths analysis of the entire internet
shows PHP as the most popular framework, closely followed by ASP.NET the
Microsoft technology. When narrowed to
the internets top 10,000 websites, that
gap grows significantly larger, showing
that more highly-trafficked sites favor
PHP.

The results of SaaS industry leaders show

an even greater gap 58% of sites use
PHP and 6% use ASP.NET. Legislatures,
however, show a much heavier reliance
on ASP.NET, with 65% using the language
and only 13% using PHP.
Whereas nearly 9% of SaaS companies
utilized Ruby on Rails, no legislatures
employed this language. (Ruby is favored
by the application developer community.)
Other frameworks include Flash and J2EE.

www.fiscalnote.com/resources

SSL Security

Front-end technology

A growing number of websites are employing the https protocol for encrypted
data transfers. To activate this protocol, a
server must have an SSL Certificate installed.

Mobile CSS

Analysis found 72.3% of SaaS companies

employed this measure for securing their
users activity. Only six state legislature
sites (11.1%) took this step.
For businesses processing credit card
transactions, SSL encryption certainly
makes sense. By masking the information
being sent from browser to server, private
details cannot be interpreted by anyone
attempting to intercept the data. However, any website can benefit from the trust
a secure connection can give the sites
users especially a government website.
Installation of an SSL certificate involves
server knowledge, but for those who
understand the command line it can be a
fairly simple and impactful process.

The term responsive design applies to

the practice of building a site to fit the
width of any browser or device. A website scales and content reflows to eliminate horizontal scroll bars and create a
better user experience. This technique is
most often accomplished using a form of
code named media queries.
An additional line of code which indicates
responsive programming is the viewport meta tag. This tag tells a browser
whether is should shrink the content to fit
the screen.
BuiltWith data for these state legislature
websites showed 4 of 54 (7.4%) using a
media query, while 14 (25.9%) were using
the viewport tag. For leading SaaS companies, 74.5% were using media queries
and 77% have a viewport meta tag.
In May, Google reported that mobile

www.fiscalnote.com/resources

search traffic passed searches on desktop in the US for the first time. This underscores the need for websites to be accessible on mobile devices. Responsive
design first became popular in 2012; over
the last three years it has become the
default approach to web design.
JavaScript
When legislature websites utilize technology for enhancements, they are most

likely to use the JavaScript library jQuery

to do so; 31 sites (57%) had the tool installed. While 42 unique JavaScript tools
were detected on the 54 websites, few
were used more than a handful of times.
Modernizr was the second-most frequent
tool used, found on 7 (13%) of legislature
websites. This tool detects a browsers
capabilities and allows a developer to
deliver a suitable website to outdated
browsers while also taking advantage of

www.fiscalnote.com/resources

modern techniques. In total, 33 websites

were using some JavaScript tool, with an
average of three tools installed per site.
In our SaaS sample, jQuery was nearly
ubiquitous with 83.5% using the tool. An
average of nearly nine tools were found
on these websites, showing a greater reliance in the technology world. JavaScript,
however, is a feature than can be disabled by users within their browsers.
Web programmers employing best practices use progressive enhancement
in order to allow their website to work
without JavaScript. When a user is able
to render JavaScript, the language only
makes the site more advanced. Government websites often have a mandate to
make their content fully accessible; avoiding JavaScript entirely is a simple way to
accomplish this, but at the expense of
user experience.

hance their websites. The leading tool

in BuiltWiths widget category was the
Google Font API, installed on four sites.
The Google Font API allows developers
to choose a non-standard dynamic font
to load with a website; offering greater
design customization and, if chosen correctly, a more readable font.
By comparison, 58% of SaaS websites
use Google Fonts; an additional 15% use
Typekit, a paid font service. Usage of custom fonts does lead to greater load times
for websites, but is an example of design
as a priority.
Analytical Tools

Widgets

While 80% of SaaS websites use Google

Analytics to understand user behavior,
less than 50% of state legislatures have
tracking code installed. Two legislature
sites use WebTrends while one uses Piwik. Both of these services are similar to
Google Analytics.

Legislatures dont use much else to en-

This leaves 26 sites without any form of

www.fiscalnote.com/resources

analytics. While the majority of SaaS websites used multiple tools, only one legislature Florida uses two tools.
For any organization that wants to better
understand their users, analytical tools
are crucial. First and foremost, they tell
website managers which pages are most
popular and how users are navigating
their site. Analytics can also tell you who
is uding the site where they are from,
what device they are using and how often they visit. This helps inform data-driv-

en decision-making a component to
any user-centric website.
If a manager would like a certain section
to get more use, they can address the
points of entry to this section throughout
the site. Additionally, analytical tools can
help identify issues with search engine
optimization (SEO).
In addition to user behavior, 30% of SaaS
websites are using a tool for site optimization analysis. Optimizing a site involves

www.fiscalnote.com/resources

which language most appeals to users or

which button design encourages a user
to click. No legislature is using optimization tools. Optimizely is the most popular
of these tools for SaaS companies.

other benefits, a CMS allows for a website to become easily scalable. Content
can be created without touching code.

Content Management Systems

The average state legislature homepage

weighs 949 kb and requires users to
make 40 server requests. Using Dulles,
VA, as a testing location via webpagetest.
org, load time averaged 3.3 seconds
while visible portions of the page loaded in 2.4 seconds. A maxim in the web
industry is that user attention begins to
wane after three seconds, leaving most
legislatures in good territory. However, six
sites took more than six seconds to load.

Only nine state legislatures had an identified CMS (16%) far fewer than the 48%
of SaaS websites using a CMS.
Their choice in CMS also differs greatly.
Five legislatures use iAPPS, while only
one of 973 SaaS companies used iAPPS.
Thats 9% compared to 0.1%; clearly a
market difference. The reverse is also
applicable. While a significant amount of
SaaS sites use WordPress as their CMS,
no legislatures used WordPress. The second-most used CMS by legislatures was
Drupal, with two.
Without a CMS, web managers would
need to create a template file for each
web page. Changes may need to be
made by modifying source code. Among

Site Speed

This in an area in which less JavaScript

and less styling benefits legislatures
their home pages require less data usage
by users. According to HTTP Archive
analysis, the average page weight for all
websites across the Internet was 2131 kb
in June 2015, making 101 server requests.
For legislatures, only five were heavier,
and only one made more requests.

www.fiscalnote.com/resources

Still, these are averages are not ideal.

With more users on mobile, lighter web
pages are a great benefit to users.

Conclusion
Above all else, usability is the most important factor in developing a website. A
project by the U.S. Department of State
analyzing traffic on embassy websites
determined that visa information was the
most demanded content by users. The
Department prioritized this content in a
redesign in order to better serve their
users; in doing so, it paired related information and helped users become more
engaged.
Legislatures that prioritize user experience will allow them to better understand
the objectives of the states inhabitants.

Some of these enhancements would require significant resources many legislature websites need a full web redesign,
and should be built on a CMS. Others
involve one simple step adding analytics code and installing an SSL certificate.
Compared with the resources being
devoted by every other sector, users are
expecting a much better experience. Its
time for state governments to step up
and devote the resources necessary to
meet these expectations.

Resources
Full SaaS analysis: http://bit.ly/1eHFyPt
Speed Test: http://www.webpagetest.org
Sunlight Foundation 2013 Report Card:
http://bit.ly/1DWT3l6

Find out how FiscalNote can help you.

Sign up for a seven-day free trial at www.fiscalnote.com
or email contact@fiscalnote.com for more information.