The efforts of the Government of Lebanon to rebuild its institutions have started after the end of the war in 1990 and are still ongoing today in pursuit of a modern and effective administration. In parallel to the efforts exerted to rehabilitate the physical infrastructure, many serious endeavors to revive and modernize the institutions of the Lebanese public sector have been made and many more are enduring.

As part of the modernization efforts, most of the Lebanese government agencies and ministries have either established web presence or are in the process of setting their own websites. However, most government-owned websites suffer from several ailments, like disparate presentation of information, lack of essential components and functionalities, as well as complicated and non-uniform navigational frameworks. These issues are causing unfriendly user experiences and frustrations which may evolve into user dissatisfaction, loss of citizen adoption and trust in the websites presented, and eventually these websites may become useless. To remedy those problems, website owners often opt to redesign or rebuild their sites from scratch, causing duplication of efforts and diluting the return on investments ventured in the government websites which are not achieving their intended purposes. The establishment of a set of Standards and Guidelines for Government website development has thus becomes vital to solve the abve mentioned problems before more websites get developed along the same lines; which can lead to an increase in the effects of the above mentioned shortcomings.

Back in 2002 OMSAR launched a project aiming at developing Standards and Guidelines for a variety of ICT resources and processes. These Standards and Guidelines are to be used by ICT Units within the public sector and would eventually be promoted for use within the private sector. Those Standards and Guidelines were published in the summer of 2003. The complete documents of the ICT Standards and Guidelines are available at: http://www.omsar.gov.lb/ICTSG/

The Lebanese Republic represented by the Office of the Minister of State for Administrative Reform (OMSAR) has received financing from the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development (hereinafter called “loan”) toward the cost of Administrative Development Project (ADP). OMSAR applied a portion of the proceeds of the loan to eligible payments under a contract for the Website Standards for the Government of Lebanon project that was awarded to Born Interactive O.C. s.a.l. on 8 November 2010.

The main objective that was set for the Website Standards for the Government of Lebanon project was to enable all Lebanese Government websites to maintain a common look and feel and share a common navigational framework through the adoption and application of standard templates, tools and policies. The project outcome is expected to promote user friendliness, high usability, citizen acceptance and adoption, and a uniform quality experience in information access and utilization of the services of the Lebanese government web presence. The project intended to provide a set of common standards and design guidelines aiming to establish the website development expectations for the whole of the Lebanese government and public sector.

The issued Standards and Guidelines do not obstruct the presentation of the individual identity and character of the individual government websites; nor do they limit creativity and originality in design, layout or functionalities. Each agency should still be able to tint its website with its specific colors, logos and character to sustain its personality and theme.

The standards and design guidelines were engineered with a goal to provide the following specific objectives:

• Allowing the public, businesses, and visitors to easily access and utilize all information on any government owned website;
• Maintaining and presenting a common look and feel and a common navigational framework on all Lebanese Government Websites;
• Reduction of time and cost involved in setting up government websites;
• Provision of essential functionalities and citizen services expected from government websites;
• Avoidance of duplication of efforts and redundant spending related to website development;
• Systematic and tightened security measures and standards on all government websites and portals.

The results expected to be achieved from applying the standards and design guidelines are summarized as follows:

• Professional and systematic outlook of government websites;
• Easier and faster citizen access to government information and services;
• Minimize the learning burden and efforts on part of the citizen seeking government services;
• Reduction of cost and duplication of efforts in developing websites;
• Faster implementation of government web portals and web services;
• Higher user satisfaction levels;
• Improved citizen acceptance and adoption of government services and regulations;
• Facilitation of e-Government implementation and improvement of service delivery by paving the way for migrating the Lebanese public websites from the UN e-Government Stage I and II (Emerging and Enhanced Presence) to Stage III, IV (Interactive and Transactional Presence) and beyond.

The present website, Standards and Guidelines Website, was developed to be the main location where the outcomes of the Website Standards for the Government of Lebanon Project are published and updated. The main outcomes of the project published on this website consist of a Policy Document, a set of Standards and Guidelines Specifications and a Webmasters Design Toolkit.

• Identifiers
• Design
• Accessibility(...)
• Development
• Hosting
• Content & Services
• Privacy & Copyright
• Promotion
• Maintenance
• Documentation & Training
• Audit & Review

The standards & guidelines are complemented by a technical toolkit that would assist websites implementation teams in complying with the standards and meet all the checkpoints described in the compliance matrix.

A policy has been established to be used as a regulatory medium in enforcing these standards and guidelines. The policy justifies the need and explains the context of the standards and guidelines from a legal perspective.