Editor's Comments of the Day

The INS maintains an informative and well designed website at www.ins.usdoj.gov. The INS website deserves commendation. The site puts a warm and friendly face on an agency whose staff is often criticized as cold and unfeeling. The site is kept fresh through regular updates. The web designers at the INS have made an effort to present the information in an easy-to-use format - the "How do I?" and "FAQ" sections are particularly well designed. The mass of information (statutes, regulations, field office contact information, fee information, press releases, etc.) presents a challenge to organize in an user-friendly format - a challenge the INS has largely met.

The efforts of the INS web designers and website managers, and the substantial expense in taxpayer dollars for the high-tech necessary to power the INS website, has resulted in a site which performs a valuable service to immigrants, employers, attorneys and others. Not surprisingly, the INS website is heavily used and experiences what is quite probably the largest traffic of any immigration website in the world. This heavy usage by internet-surfers is itself a compliment to the INS webmaster and other website managers (please come forward and name yourselves for the applause!). The INS has released its latest usage statistics at: http://www.ins.usdoj.gov/graphics/aboutins/insmission/sitestats.htm.

A minor criticism of the otherwise splendid efforts of the INS's web team is that the web traffic statistics reported by the INS do not use industry standard metrics. Three of the most commonly used traffic metrics on the internet are monthly unique users (also sometimes called monthly unique visitors), monthly page views, and monthly stickiness (i.e. the average user-session length for the month). Instead, the INS reports the number of users per workday which, if defined as monthly users divided by the number of workdays, is inaccurate as the same user may visit the site several times during a month. If the INS were to use industry standard statistics (e.g. by using WebTrends, the most widely used traffic measurement tool by websites in the US), policy makers and budget overseers would have a greater understanding of the results obtained from the money allocated to maintain the website. The INS's web team would also have an objective basis for claiming to serve the public cost-effectively through its fine website.