(IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 8, No. 8, 2017 163 | Page www.ijacsa.thesai.org Usability of Government Websites Mahmood Ashraf 1 , Faiza Shabbir Cheema 1 , Tanzila Saba 2 , Abdul Mateen 1 1 Department of Computer Science Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan 2 College of Computer and Information sciences Prince Sultan University Riyadh 11586 Saudi Arabia Abstract—Usability of Government websites plays pivotal role in order to provide benefits and services to the citizens. This study presents a usability evaluation for investigating the Nielsen’s usability attributes in Government websites. Based on the previous studies, a proposed website template is used in this study. This template is compared with a selected Government website. Thirty (30) participants performed three (3) representative tasks for each website. The results show that the user responses for the parameters of efficiency, memorability and pleasantness are improved for the proposed template. This effort is a part of the study that may lead to the principles for improving the usability of Government websites of Pakistan. Keywords—Usability; statutory bodies websites; government websites I. INTRODUCTION The Web is currently the main source of providing computer services to reach a larger number of users having different characteristics [1]. After the commercialization has been started on the Internet, the interactive media segment of the Internet, organizations and people hustled to put Web pages and substance on quality of experience that people have is a concern, and one challenge is to ensure the usability of the site [2]. In order to provide government services to the public, Government websites are important windows [3] to its citizens. While visiting a website, usability and user experience are the major challenges [2]. To overcome these challenges, emphasis on usability and user experience is paramount. One way of achieving this is by measuring the easiness of the website’s interface [4]. Usability is the quality attribute that measures the easiness of an interface [4]. Battleson et al. (2001) asserted that usability testing is the best approach to asses a website’s usability [5]. The meaning of usability, overall, proposes that there are four common factors that influence usability of the interactive system clients, assignments, innovation and setting. The features studied by Bruno et al. (2005), were grouped into above four factors [6]. Usability evaluation concentrates on how well clients can learn and utilize an item to attain their objectives. It also states to how clients are content with that method. To collect this data, specialists use a variety of procedures that collect response from customers about a present site or ideas related to a new site [7]. The articulation, “test early and frequently”, is especially fitting with regards to usability testing [7]. There are many methods for the evaluation of usability of the websites like scenario, paper prototype, email, think aloud procedure, co discovery learning, eye tracking and user testing. This paper reports a user study that was conducted to investigate whether the designed template fulfills the Nielsen’s usability attributes. For this purpose a few tasks were set which were performed by thirty users and pre-test was filled before performing these tasks and post-test questionnaires were filled by the users after performing these tasks. Quantitative data was collected through the collection of results on the basis of filled questionnaires and qualitative data was also collected by observing the users. II. LITERATURE REVIEW The meaning of usability, overall, proposes that there are four mutual factors that influence the usability of the interactive system clients, responsibilities, tools and setting. The features investigated by [6], were come together into these four factors. Many researchers performed usability studies for websites, for mobile web browsing, for older adults. A usability study was performed in which users’ mobile browsing experience was evaluated in comparison to desktop Web browsing [8]. Two usability studies were conducted to study whether there were variances in how older adults work together with the Web and whether changes in content size would influence execution [9]. Another research principally focused on Web usability and older adults and set up that even when Web experience is organized, older adults still revealed less Web capability than younger adults. They bolstered the theory that Web aptitude is fundamentally impacted by how clients took in the Web - or their total time spent in community oriented learning situations (gaining from and with others) – instead of exactly to what extent or how regularly they have utilized it [10]. As individuals give careful consideration to the possibility of open administration, government sites end up noticeably vital window to the resident, which can help the legislature to give open administration [3]. In many countries, many researchers performed usability evaluation of many government website. For example: Theory of usability engineer and information architecture was applied on the Canadian Government website [11]. Eleven websites in Zhejiang Province which were of government were taken as samples. Based on the prior research Quasi-experimental study was applied to tell usability issues in these websites and then comprehensive them to a boarder extent [3]. A user study was performed by Yuan and Zhongling having 24 students as participants. Every one of them was understudies with at any