Thames Valley Police is the leading UK police force for digital governance, says the latest Sitemorse INDEX report

21 May 2018

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Thames Valley Police

London, 21st May 2018 – Thames Valley Police has received praise for the quality of its digital governance, topping the list of UK police forces in the latest Sitemorse INDEX quarterly report.

The Sitemorse INDEX reviews sites, scoring and ranking them based on optimisation, experience, compliance and factors such as loading speed and accessibility.

Thames Valley Police led the table of UK police forces, coming in first place with a score of 7.02 out of 10. This was an increase of 0.7 points since Q1, when Thames Valley Police placed third in the INDEX – indicating a significant step up.

The site saw a particular improvement in functionality (which covers issues such as broken links), and topped the list in this category. It also came in first place for the standard of email links; and came near the top for performance, metadata and standard of HTML. However, it also scored 0 out of 10 for accessibility, indicating that there are significant areas for improvement which would allow Thames Valley Police to secure its top-level placement and develop their digital confidence.

Dyfed-Powys Police Force, meanwhile, showed the greatest improvement, increasing its score from 3.27 to 4.65 and climbing 22 places, having notably boosted the standard of HTML delivery.

Also in the top five were:

2. City of London Police – 6.6

3. Metropolitan Police Service – 6.4

4. Merseyside Police – 6.3

5. Hampshire Constabulary – 5.6

Leicestershire Constabulary, Dorset Police and Sussex Police also all joined the top 10, having come in 21st, 11th and 18th place respectively, in Q1.

Overall, UK Police forces still do not perform as strongly as UK local government, however. In that INDEX, all of the top ten sites scored 8.3 or above and only two scored under 8 for accessibility – so there is still much that police forces can do to improve the user experience they deliver.

Issues found on low performing sites included broken links, missing images, faulty email addresses and webpages that lacked titles and descriptions. Many organisations appear to be unaware of the issues that are discovered and many more struggle with the substantial challenge of manually monitoring and implementing repairs.

Lawrence Shaw, CEO of Sitemorse, said, “It’s a pleasure to see police forces working to improve digital standards. Strong digital governance delivery is absolutely critical for police forces to function effectively today. Poor accessibility, poor performance and issues like broken links and emails make essential public services inaccessible for the people who rely on them. At Sitemorse, we work to make it fast and easy for digital managers to address issues, to rapidly tackle the most urgent tasks and to deliver digital to a high standard on an ongoing basis.”

The results of the INDEX were based on a total of over 115m tests on public pages carried out in April 2018. Every page on every site surveyed was subjected to over 1,600 unique tests, checks and measures each.

Other sectors covered by a Sitemorse INDEX include local government, central government, UK higher education, US airlines and consumer finance.

The Sitemorse INDEX report is carried out by Sitemorse, which helps clients to continuously and automatically monitor for issues relating to optimisation, experience and compliance (including SEO and accessibility) on public and private pages. The findings of the latest report, for Q2 2018, will be released over the course of May 2018. The full results for UK Police Forces can be found here: https://sitemorse.com/index/report.html?rt=1414

 

About the Sitemorse INDEX

Since 2002, the Sitemorse INDEX has provided an independent industry standard for benchmarking digital governance. Sites are reviewed and scored based on some 1,600 tests, checks and measures per page, identifying actions that improve optimisation, experience and compliance. Since its inception, it has been the fundamental measure of digital capability for organisations that strive for online excellence.

Scoring highly typically reflects those that have strong digital leadership and understand the importance of providing the best visitor experience possible – and it reflects positively on the entire organisation’s operations and branding.

The latest results follow over 115m tests on public pages carried out in April 2018. These results provide extensive insights into the experience that these sites deliver and offer vital information on how they can better meet audience expectations – points that are crucial, but impractical to capture manually. Indeed, organisations are all too often unaware of what might be simple actions that they could take that would offer immediate improvements to their delivery.

 

About Sitemorse

Sitemorse (www.Sitemorse.com) helps organizations to efficiently drive improved user experience, ensuring that content is always optimised and that compliance requirements are always met. With clients in every corner of the world, Sitemorse (www.Sitemorse.com) sets out to remove endless reporting from Digital Governance and to instead provide actionable insights so that major changes can be made quickly.

The company has now been moving the field of Digital Governance forwards for over 15 years, while remaining privately owned, and continues to provide clients with new tools and capabilities every year. Most recently, this has included a focus on extending capabilities directly within the CMS, as well as addressing the governance / QA service issue of ‘endless reporting’.

Sitemorse (www.Sitemorse.com) helps digital managers to build strong processes and accountability, to minimise risks and to achieve the highest standards of content quality. And with Sitemorse (www.Sitemorse.com), there is no need for the substantial infrastructure, support and accordant costs that are required for manual quality and compliance checks.