A more consistent approach to the design of central government websites is emerging with a “demonstrable” improvement in usability, according to a report by Porter Research.

Porter Research looked at each government department’s website and scored them out of 100, based on government’s own best practice guidelines. The recently redesigned Department of Health website received the highest score of 85.6.

Adrian Porter, the author of the report, said: “The site performed consistently well in all our categories of assessment, and as with last year’s design, it demonstrates that it is possible to create an attractive and intuitive website without recourse to the extensive use of graphic elements.”

However, older sites were poorly maintained and email response times were unacceptably low. Last year’s best performer, The Equal Opportunities Commission, only managed a score of 67 this year largely because its fundamentally good design was overloaded with content.

Half of all sites received a score under 65, which Porter considers the level where urgent attention is needed. The Office of Fair Trading was the worst performer with a score of 53.7.

Local e-Government also received a boost this week, when the minister responsible, Phil Hope, announced that all local authorities are expected to meet the year end target for getting services online.

Speaking at yesterday’s National Projects EXPO 2005 event in London, the minister expects authorities to deliver £1.2 billion in efficiency savings by 2007/08 as a result of e-Government investment.

Phil Hope said: “The results from IEG4 show the good progress councils are making on e- government, and the potential efficiency gains arising from this work, supported by outputs from the National Projects. The key is making it real - real life changes to the quality of life for ordinary people - people focussed outcomes.”