A scoreboard for government security
Most people trust email from their county and type their details into its website without a second thought. GovLeaderboard checks whether that trust is backed up by the basic settings that stop fake email, protect the website and keep the domain from being hijacked.
Why a leaderboard
Government IT teams are small and busy, and these settings are easy to miss. A public ranking shows each team where it stands next to its neighbors, gives it a plain list of what to fix, and shows the improvement when the fix is in. Every county page ends with that list.
What we do and don't do
- We only read public DNS records and load public web pages, the same way a browser or a mail server does.
- We never log in, guess passwords, scan for open ports or test for weak spots.
- Each site gets a handful of requests a day, and our checker names itself as GovLeaderboard so site owners can see who visited.
Independent
GovLeaderboard is an independent project. It isn't run by, paid by or connected to any government, and no government can pay to change its score. Scores only go up when the settings really change.
Something wrong?
If you work for a government on the site and a result looks wrong, or we're checking the wrong website or email domain, email hello@govleaderboard.com. We'll recheck it and fix the scoring if we got it wrong.
Where the data comes from
- Minnesota counties: websites and email domains from the Minnesota Secretary of State, populations from the US Census Bureau's 2025 estimates, neighbors from the Census county adjacency file, and office details from GISFinder.
What's next
Minnesota's 87 counties are first. Cities, townships, school districts and other states come next, along with more kinds of checks.