This paper discusses the results from the evaluations of public web sites in Norway in view of benchmarking as a method to ensure public agencies’ commitment to standards.

The project started in 2001 when a set of 21 indicators were developed and used in an evalua-tion of about 550 public web sites. This process was repeated in 2003 with a renewed set of indicators (25) including an evaluation of more than 600 public web sites. We found a signifi-cant improvement from 2001 to 2003 and we noticed that the evaluation spurred a competi-tion among the various public agencies.

The paper concludes however, that the indicator set should include more criteria than those the existing evaluations are based on. We furthermore claim that these evaluations should be supplemented with other types of testing in order to get a more comprehensive assessment of public web sites.

In: Proceedings from ECEG 2004, Dublin, Ireland