PA Auditor General Report Finds Megan's Law Website Needs 'Dramatic' Improvements

A recent report by the PA Auditor General gave the PA Megan’s Law Website a grade of ‘C’, stating that the site lacks clarity in photographs – they are often blurry or too light and many offenders even have their eye’s closed in the photos.

The report also said that inconsistencies in the names of towns and cities means that searches often do not return proper data or complete sex offender lists.

“We are not pleased with the Megan’s Law website,” said Wagner. “We think it could be dramatically improved.”

Recommendations to improve the site include a mapping tool to include street maps where offenders live and multiple color photos of each offender along with the dates the photos were taken.

Also, spelling inconsistencies, such as spelling Pittsburgh with or without an ‘h’, should be corrected. They also recommended adding an email update feature that would notify residents when sex offenders move into their neighborhoods.

Broken and non-functional websites have plagued the state of PA for years. A simple surf through the state.pa.us website and it’s departmental websites normally returns many errors, unaccessible pages and features, and a host of other problems that have been frustrating for many users.

The functionality of many of these government websites reflects upon the inefficiency of government itself, according to some experts.