Are you trying to understand your website traffic?

I am a big fan of a service called Quantcast. 

From their website:
Quantcast is a new media measurement service that enables advertisers to view
audience reports for millions of sites and services to build their brands with
confidence.

Recently I came across an interesting paper from Princeton
University titled "Government Data and the Invisible Hand." The paper proposes
ways that government can do a better job making information more available to
citizens. It's a good read and only ten pages: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1138083

The paper makes a strong statement that government web sites
have failed to provide government data to the public, and that private industry
can do a better job. I don't agree with this view, but I believe that the paper
makes many insightful observations and provides useful direction to policy
makers as well as government professionals involved in planning the future of
the web and e-government within individual agencies.

The bottom line from my standpoint:

1)       As the authors
of the paper suggest, government should put far more energy into publishing
information in highly-structured formats so that the information can be
repurposed for distribution by other organizations (private, public,
non-profit, etc.).

2)       The authors
think government should make structuring content the top priority, but they
discount two areas where the government Web manager plays a critical role.  First, the government Web manager acts as an
editor raising awareness of the most valuable content.  An agency may have 50 publications on its
website on a certain topic, the government Web manager can feature the publication
that is most current and has the most potential public valuable.  Second, government agencies are increasingly
acting as citizen/customer relationship managers by learning what citizens are
interested in, recommending complementary services and content, and creating
ongoing ways of receiving updates direct from the government.  In my opinion, the biggest obstacle for a
citizen trying to get content or services from the government is time.  Government Web managers are increasingly
adept at making interaction with their agencies more efficient.

On the web, we value Amazon's ability to create an efficient
and pleasant shopping experience over its ability to offer lots of different
products.  Amazon features the most interesting
(or maybe profitable) products, allows users to see suggestions based on what
other users have purchased, and gathers information from users so it can notify
them when new information and products of interest are available.  In working with federal agencies since 2003,
I've seen enormous strides in how government Web managers understand their
audience and play the role of trusted editor. 
In addition, we've seen many government websites deploy strategies to
use the website as the hub of the citizens relationship with the agency so that
it serves not just as a content repository, but also as a place to signup for email
updates and submit questions and comments. 
In full disclosure, my company, GovDelivery, is a private sector
organization that serves many governments with a digital communication
platform.  This might make me bias, but
it also gives me insight into how government websites have leveraged at least
one platform created in the private sector to offer tens of thousands of
different topics for subscription and send over 50 million digital messages out
every month.  This seems to be the best
of both worlds.  Government controls the
content, the message, and the citizen relationship, but is able to leverage the
best technology from the private sector. 
Should GovDelivery fail to continue to innovate and meet government
needs, another company will step in to fill the new needs of the government (this
is exactly how companies move between technology providers over time). 

Highly-structured content on government websites has the benefit
of making the websites easier to manage and facilitating easy deployment of new
services that leverage the content in different ways.  This is a tremendous benefit, but expecting
the private or non-profit sectors to manage and improve this type of service
without a direct connection to the government agency is, in my opinion, like telling
Amazon to outsource its homepage and its customer database.