Online Government Resources

Evaluating the Agriculture Committee Websites

There are many online resources available for people who want to stay updated on agricultural policy. Two of the best sources for policy news are the House Committee on Agriculture and the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, & Forestry. These two websites are updated and edited daily. They contain information on agricultural legislation, agricultural policy news, committee hearings and actions, committee members, and more. These websites publish and archive all of the official government policy documents and press releases.

In the three tables below, both websites were evaluated for three primary criteria: content, design, and interaction. Each criteria was further divided into five subcategories. The websites were evaluated on the following scale:

VERY POOR - POOR - MODERATE - GOOD - VERY GOOD - EXCELLENT

Evaluations were determined based on criteria descriptions and best practices provided by Agriculture Communication in Action: A Hands-On Approach (Telg & Irani, 2012) and The Non-Designer's Design Book (Williams, 2014), as well as website assessment tools published by the University of Washington. The results are summarized below:

Content
	House Agriculture Committee www.agriculture.house.gov	Senate Agriculture Committee www.agriculture.senate.gov
Accuracy	EXCELLENT	EXCELLENT
Authority	EXCELLENT	EXCELLENT
Objectivity	GOOD	VERY GOOD
Currency	EXCELLENT	EXCELLENT
Coverage	EXCELLENT	VERY GOOD

Design
	House Agriculture Committee www.agriculture.house.gov	Senate Agriculture Committee www.agriculture.senate.gov
Home Page	EXCELLENT	VERY GOOD
Readability	VERY GOOD	VERY GOOD
Visual Appeal	VERY GOOD	EXCELLENT
Graphics, photos, videos	GOOD	VERY GOOD
Consistency	EXCELLENT	VERY GOOD

Interaction
	House Agriculture Committee www.agriculture.house.gov	Senate Agriculture Committee www.agriculture.senate.gov
Accessibility	EXCELLENT	EXCELLENT
Navigation	EXCELLENT	EXCELLENT
Links	GOOD	VERY GOOD
Activity	MODERATE	MODERATE
Contact	GOOD	GOOD

Based on the results summarized in these three tables, both websites satisfy all 15 subcategories of the three primary criteria. This makes the House Agriculture Committee and Senate Agriculture Committee excellent sources for agricultural policy information. Let's look at each of the three primary criteria results in more detail.

Content

Content refers to the text and information supplied by the website. This criterion was evaluated based on the accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency, and coverage of the information. As government-sponsored sites (.gov), these websites had excellent accuracy and authority. They also had excellent currency because they are updated multiple times throughout the day. One area of improvement in this area could be for the House Agriculture Committee to dedicate equal space and resources to both the majority and minority party members. The Senate Agriculture Committee website does this, which increases the level of objectivity.

Design

Overall, both websites had strong design features. The colors, graphics, alignments, and fonts were easy to read and contributed to the overall purpose of the website. However, older adults may experience some difficulty reading the text on the House Agriculture Committee website, because it uses a red font over a white background. This may not provide enough contrast for older adults and people with vision impairments. The Senate Agriculture Committee website utilizes a green, gray, black, and white color scheme. This provides good contrast and reinforces the ideas of agriculture, nutrition, and forestry. However, the use of large photographs on each subpage forces users to scroll down to find information. This may stop some users from exploring all of the text content.

Interaction

Interaction was the weakest criteria for both websites. Interaction refers to how well the website meets the users' needs. Both websites are easy to find using a search engine, and both content multiple navigation tools to move to different subpages within the website. Both websites also provide clear contact information (the House provides email communication, while the Senate does not). Both websites also link to internal and external content. When clicked on, links to webpages, videos, and subpages load quickly. Live feeds of committee hearings load quickly with a clear picture, sufficient volume, and few pauses for buffering. Unfortunately, neither website promotes much user interaction. The website activity is limited to multimedia and search technologies. Websites can increase their user activity by including surveys, comment sections, or audio selections. 

Other Online Resources

Overall, both the House and Senate Agriculture Committee websites provide satisfactory content, design, and interactive features to be used as online resources. In addition to these websites, here are four more reliable web resources that cover agricultural policy:

• United States Department of Agriculture (www.usda.gov)
• AgWeek News (www.agweek.com)
• Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (www.oecd.org)
• National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy (www.ncfap.org)