A Comparative Evaluation of Iran's Ministry of Interior Website against Those of Countries Identified by the World Bank and IMF: Employing WQET Quality Assessment and Proposing a Novel Model

This study aims to evaluate the quality of Iran's Ministry of Interior website by comparing it with the websites of countries recognized by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), employing the Website Quality Evaluation Tool (WQET). We examined one hundred websites using WQET, encompassing nine criteria: content, functionality, currency, coverage, graphics, links, authority, style, and meta-tag use. This was affirmed through the validity of the interface-content tool (Cronbach's Alpha score of 0.91). The study revealed that Iran's Ministry of Interior website ranks 17th among the countries surveyed, positioning it robustly. The US Interior Ministry's website ranked first, followed by those of Germany, Belgium, Taiwan, Qatar, and Finland, all demonstrating excellent quality. Website designers focus predominantly on coverage, content, style, and graphics of the nine criteria under examination, leading to generally good ratings. However, the functionality and links criteria were rated average, while authority, currency, and meta-tag use were judged weak. Iran's Ministry of Interior website must focus on enhancing the factors influencing the overall quality to improve its standing. It is recommended to employ WQET to evaluate the websites of provincial governorates, organizations under the Ministry of Interior, as well as other government and non-government organizations with similar websites globally, in a bid to elevate the quality and accessibility of their online platforms.