Self-Assessment FAQ

Why is the DIA conducting a self-assessment process?

The main purpose of the New Zealand government websites self-assessment is to measure the level of compliance to the New Zealand Government web standards (NZGWS).

To this end, the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) - the custodians of the NZGWS - will gain a better understanding of how effective agencies have been in implementing the NZGWS. DIA will then be able to focus resources on assisting agencies in problem areas of the NZGWS as identified from the self-assessments.

The second purpose of the self-assessment process is to provide an educational experience for agency web teams. That is, when agencies conduct their own website assessments, they will be exposed to the web standards and hopefully gain a better understanding of them. It is hoped that this exercise will increase the level to which agencies comply with the NZGWS.

Have assessments of government websites about NZGWS been conducted before?

The New Zealand Government mandated in 2003 that New Zealand Public Service Departments would comply with the NZGWS and that agencies must conduct annual self-assessment audits. In 2008, the State Services Commission (SSC) conducted an audit of more than 500 government agency websites to monitor the NZGWS adoption amongst the agencies.

This process proved to be time consuming and resource intensive for the SSC and did not require government agencies taking an active role in the assessment. Therefore, in 2010 it was decided that DIA would manage an across agency self-assessment of NZGWS compliance.

What if my agency does not have the skills to perform the assessment?

DIA can provide each agency with a list of vendors who may be able to assist them with the audit. Email web.standards@dia.govt.nz for details. 

We are hesitant to conduct self-audits because we may score very low in NZGWS compliance.

DIA is conducting the self-assessment process primarily as a way to improve the way it educates the public sector about NZGWS. The process is in no way intended to be authoritarian, NZGWS are a community initiative, maintained via a working group of agency practitioners and DIA is the custodian of the NZGWS. DIA has no plans to publicize poorly performing agencies versus well performing agencies.

Our web team will not have enough time to fix our websites before the 30 June, 2011 cut-off period.

The self-assessment process to designed to draw attention to accessibility issues that effect websites. If problems arise from the audit, web teams should aim to improve as many issues when they have the resources to do so. An agency that has resolved issues from the 2011 audit will find that the 2012 audit shows a marked improvement and this will reflect positively on the agency.

An 8 week time period from when WSSAT is available to the 2011 reporting period cutoff date is very short.

Yes, 8 weeks is a short time frame. We recommend that auditors commence their website evaluations as soon as possible using the sample WSSAT questions (Google Docs) and record the answers in their own database. AA's should then copy over their answers when WSSAT comes online in May 2011. From July 2011, agencies will have 12 months to conduct their second self-assessments before the second annual reporting period closes.

What will happen to the data submitted by the agencies?

DIA expects to send a WSSAT report to agencies in the months following the 2011 self-assessment deadline.