Showing posts with label accessibility. Show all posts
Showing posts with label accessibility. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

How does government manage the consequences of an imbalance in speed of transparency & speed of accountability?

One of the emerging challenges for governments in the online age is managing the discrepancy between the speed of transparency and the speed of accountability.

With digitalisation and the internet, the speed at which government information is made public is becoming faster, with it being easier to collect, aggregate and publish information and data in near or even real-time.

We see this particularly in public transit data, where many cities around the world now publish real-time data on the location and load of their buses, trains and trams, and in the health industry where a number of states have begun offering near real-time data on the congestion in emergency waiting rooms.

We're also seeing similar near real-time reporting on river levels, dams, traffic congestion and closures, and estimated real-time reports on everything from population to national debt levels.

This trend is expanding, with the Sense-T network in Tasmania pioneering an economy-wide sensor network and data resource. Similarly the Department of Finance in Canberra is working on a system to provide real-time budget information on government expenditure down to every $500 for internal management and public transparency purposes.

This trend is a leap forward in government transparency, providing citizens, bureaucrats and politicians with far greater visibility on how our governance systems are performing and far more capability to identify trends or patterns quickly.

We're seeing a similar transparency event at the moment, with the expenses scandal enfolding the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Bronwyn Bishop, related to her use of a helicopter and several charter flights to attend political fund-raising events.

What this event has also highlighted is that while Australia's governance systems are increasing the speed of transparency, our capability to apply that information to accountable decision-making isn't consistently accelerating at the same rate.

In other words, while we increasingly can obtain the information needed for rapid decision-making, the entrenched processes and methods for decision-making in government are lagging far behind.

We see this in the failure rate of IT projects, which can drag on for years after it's clear they will fail, when laws fail to work as they should and it takes months or years to amend them, when the public has judged a politician's actions, but parliament can take no formal action for months due to being out of session.

Of course many sound reasons can and are given by bureaucrats and politicians as to why decisions need to take lots of time.

Decision-makers from the pre-internet world will say that they need to ensure they have all the necessary data, have digested it, reflected on it, considered alternatives and consequences, consulted widely and only then are able to tweak or change a decision.

This is a fair position with many defensible qualities - it reflects the world in which these people grew up, when decision-making could be undertaken leisurely while the world waited.

However both management theory and the behaviour of our communities have changed.

Start-ups grow and become huge companies based on their ability to make decisions rapidly. They are continuously experimenting and testing new approaches to 'tweak' their businesses for greater success. This is underpinned by streams of real-time data which show the consequences of each experimental change, allowing the organisations to adjust their approach in very short time-frames, minimising their potential losses from sub-optimal decisions.

The community equally reacts very quickly to evidence of poor decisions and bad outcomes, with the internet, particularly social media, fueling this trend.

While this doesn't mean the community is consistently in the right on these matters, it does require decision-makers to respond and address concerns far more rapidly than they've had to in the past - 'holding the line' or 'depriving an issue of oxygen' are no longer effective strategies for delaying decision-making into the leisurely timeframes that older decision-makers grew up with.

This issue in the disparate speed of transparency (data release) and accountability (clear and unequivocal response) is growing as more organisations release more data and more of the public is collecting, collating and releasing data from their interactions with organisations.

The imbalance is fast becoming a critical challenge for governments to manage and could lead to some very ugly consequences if politicians and agencies don't rethink their roles and update their approaches.

Of course governments could attempt to sit back and 'tough it out', trying to hold their line against the increasing speed of transparency and accountability. In my view this would result in the worst possible result in the long-term, with increasingly frustrated citizens resorting to more and more active means to have government take accountability for their decisions in the timeframes that citizens regard as appropriate.

My hope is that government can reinvent itself, drawing on both internal and external capabilities and expertise to find a path that matches fast transparency with appropriately fast accountability.

I'd like to see governments challenge themselves to test all of their historic assumptions and approaches - reconsidering how they develop policy, how they consult, how they legislate and how they engage and inform the community, in order to address a world where 'outsiders' (non-public servants) are identifying issues and worrying trends at an accelerated rate.

Perhaps we need a radical new ways to develop and enforce laws, that provide scope for experimentation within legislation for agencies to reinterpret the letter of a law in order to fulfill it's desired outcomes and spirit.

Perhaps we need continuous online consulting processes, supported by traditional face-to-face and phone/mail surveys, which allow government to monitor and understand sentiment throughout policy development and implementation and allow a 'board' of citizens to oversee and adjust programs to maximise their effectiveness over time.

Perhaps we need mechanisms for citizens to put forward policies and legislation for parliament to consider, tools that allow citizens to recall politicians for re-election or a citizen-led approach to determining what entitlements are legitimate for politicians and what they should be paid, with penalties and appropriate recourse for citizens to sack representatives who fail to uphold the values the community expects at a far greater speed than the current election cycle.

There's sure to be many other ideas and mechanisms which may help deliver a stable and sustainable democratic state in the digital age of high-speed transparency and accountability - we just need governments to start experimenting - with citizens, not on them - to discover which work best.

Read full post...

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

What penalties are there for agencies and individuals who breach government security and accessibility policies for websites and online channels?

I regularly hear stories from people in government agencies and councils about how their organisation isn't meeting mandated security and accessibility requirements for their websites and broader online presence.

Often this is because there's insufficient time, money or a lack of understanding of the mandated requirements by either the business owners or the vendor doing the work. I still remember an experienced developer at a web development company claiming that in his ten years of working on government websites he'd never understood that accessibility was a legal requirement.

Sometimes I can understand and accept these reasons. 

Ministers set deadlines, as do real world events, this can constrain the full process of testing the security and accessibility of a website. 

Equally some campaigns are spread across different channels, and the budget allocated to online doesn't always allow for the best possible outcomes - or there's some 'bling' requested by senior management that eats the budget of the project very quickly. Again these can make it difficult to find the money to do any necessary testing and adjustment. 

In a few cases I get told that security or accessibility was simply "not important" to senior management, the business owner or the ICT team/vendors doing the work. 

These cases I could never condone, and it did affect my public service career when I stood up to senior people who held this attitude - even when I 'won' the point and was able to ensure websites were delivered to government-mandated minimum requirements.

This last group still worries me - and I've heard several new stories in the last month along the same line.

The fact these people are still around is disheartening, and raises a major question for me:

What penalties exist for agencies or individuals who deliberately go against the government's mandated policies and standards for websites, on topics such as security and accessibility?

I'm not aware of any public servant ever being investigated, sanctioned, retrained, demoted, moved or sacked after making a decision to ignore or water down website requirements.

In fact I can recall a few times where they were promoted and rewarded for their work in delivering outcomes cost-effectively and quickly.

Of course there's potential legal ramifications for ignoring both security and accessibility requirements - however it is generally the agency that takes on this risk, rather than the individual who exposed them to it.

In some cases the individual may not even have been the business owner, or has moved on to a different role, even a different agency.

This type of behaviour is generally picked up and addressed when an individual breaches finance, procurement or HR guidelines.

I'd like to see the same apply for websites - the front door of the modern government.

Whether a federal agency or local council, you serve citizens through your online presence, and putting them at security risk, or creating sites that a significant proportion of your audience can't access by not meeting mandated standards and policies is simply not on.

Read full post...

Tuesday, August 05, 2014

Accessibility is for everyone - an awesome accessibility alphabet

Gian Wild of AccessibilityOz made me aware of this awesome accessibility alphabet of mini-personas, reflecting a large group of people for whom accessibility in websites and documents is critical.

This is the sort of material I think agencies should make available to all their staff to help them be more mindful of the range of people who may be affected by accessibility issues.

An Alphabet of Accessibility Issues - the-pastry-box-project.net/anne-gibson/2014-July-31

Read full post...

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Guest post: We should be celebrating our victories

Hi, today I'm featuring a guest post by Gian Wild of AccessibilityOz

Gian is Australia's leading specialist in accessibility and was on the working group that designed the WCAG 2.0 guidelines that agencies must follow.

Gian will be speaking at a series of free breakfast seminars at the start of April in Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney with Texthelp Ltd on products available to improve the accessibility compliance of your site. This include BrowseAloud (an assistive technology) and OzPlayer (an accessible video player).

For more information visit www.accessibilityoz.com.au/2014/03/accessibility-breakfasts-melbourne-canberra-and-brisbane/

Or register here



We should be celebrating our victories

Recently AGIMO released their Progress Report into the Web Accessibility National Transition Strategy. I have sat back and watched as a number of commentators have focused on the negative; that Government web sites are still not fully accessible. A rumour has been doing the rounds that accessibility compliance is just too hard and that AGIMO is backing away from the National Transition Strategy and that web sites won’t need to meet the Level AA deadline of December 2014.

A recent study on assessing and promoting e-accessibility has been released which compared the accessibility of the EU27 countries, Australia, Canada, Norway and the US. In terms of the overall test scores, as seen in the graph below, Australia ranks second of all 31 countries, just behind the UK.

Bar graph of overall percentage test scores for each country, long description at the end of the article
Bar graph of overall percentage test scores for each country, long description at the end of the article (click to enlarge image)
Countries were given a score of zero, one or two, depending on their accessibility compliance pertaining to a particular test. Zero means the accessibility requirement was not met, 1 point means the requirement was partially met and two points means the requirement was fully met. Australia has the third lowest percentage of zero scores (no accessibility), behind the UK and Canada.

Bar graph showing the percentage of each test score (0, 1 or 2) for each country, long description at the end of the article
Bar graph showing the percentage of each test score (0, 1 or 2) for each country, long description at the end of the article (click to enlarge image)

When we look at Australian statistics, we see an impressive increase in the accessibility of Government sites. The 2010 NTS Baseline Report indicated 4.7% of Government web sites met WCAG2 at a particular level. At the end of 2012, 26% of Government web sites met Level A of WCAG2; that’s a 450% increase! And another 46% of sites are aiming to meet the Level AA requirement at the end of December 2014. In addition to this, 73% of all agencies have re-evaluated their web publishing processes, with an additional 21% intending to do so in the near future. Over half (58%) of agencies have changed their CMSes, with an additional 27% intending to do so in the near future. In procurement - the one area of accessibility where agencies have little control - over 97% of agencies are intending to or have already reviewed procurement strategies. More than 80% use an automated accessibility testing tool regularly.

Australia is certainly not alone in having Government requirements around accessibility, but, as this recent study suggests, we are leading the world in terms of accessibility compliance. We should be celebrating our victories; yes, there is a long way to go, but look at what we’ve done!


Overall scores for each country long description:

The highest ranking country is the UK with approximately 72% of the maximum score, followed by Australia with approximately 67% of the maximum score. The average score for the EU27 countries is approximately 52%. The lowest scoring country is Greece with 30%


Distribution of test scores for each country long description:

The country with the lowest percentage of 'zero' test scores is Canada, with an approximate percentage of 25% 'zero' scores, approximately 24% of 'one' scores and 51% of 'two' scores. The country with the second lowest percentage of 'zero' test scores if the UK with approximately 28% 'zero' scores, 1% 'one' scores and 71% 'two' scores. The country with the third lowest percentage of 'zero' test scores is Australia with approximately 29% 'zero' scores, 11% 'one' scores' and 60% 'two' scores. The country with the highest percentage of 'zero' test scores was Greece, with approximately 68% 'zero' test scores, 3% 'one' test scores and 28% 'two' test scores.

For more blog posts from Gian visit www.accessibilityoz.com.au/accessibility-blog/

Read full post...

Friday, October 18, 2013

Suggestions for governments stepping into open data

I've been completing a survey for the Spatial Industries Business Association (SIBA) related to the Queensland Government's open data initiative, where one of the questions asked Can you list or describe any learnings that would be useful in Queensland?

I've provided a number of my thoughts on this topic, having closely observed open data initiatives by government over the last five years, and written periodically on the topic myself, such as:


To share the thoughts I placed in the survey more broadly - for any value they have for other jurisdictions - I've included them below:

  • Data released in unusable formats is less useful - it is important to mandate standards within government to define what is open data and how it should be released and educate broadly within agencies that collect and release data.
  • Need to transform end-to-end data process. Often data is unusable due to poor collection or collation methods or due to contractual terms which limit use. To ensure data can be released in an open format, the entire process may require reinvention.
  • Open data is a tool, not a solution and is only a starting point. Much data remains difficult to use, even when open, as communities and organisations don't have the skills to extract value from it. There needs to be an ongoing focus on demonstrating and facilitating how value can be derived from data, involving hack events, case studies and the integration of easy-to-use analysis tools into the data store to broaden the user pool and the economic and social value. Some consideration should be given to integrating the use and analysis of open data into school work within curriculum frameworks.
  • Data needs to be publicly organised in ways which make sense to its users, rather than to the government agencies releasing it. There is a tendency for governments to organise data like they organise their websites - into a hierarchy that reflects their organisational structures, rather than how users interact with government. Note that the 'behind the scenes' hierarchy can still reflect organisational bias, but the public hierarchy should work for the users over the contributors.
  • Provide methods for the community to improve and supplement the open data, not simply request it. There are many ways in which communities can add value to government data, through independent data sets and correcting erroneous information. This needs to be supported in a managed way.
  • Integrate local with state based data - aka include council and independent data into the data store, don't keep it state only. There's a lot of value in integrating datasets, however this can be difficult for non-programmers when last datasets are stored in different formats in different systems.
  • Mandate data champions in every agency, or via a centre of expertise, who are responsible for educating and supporting agency senior and line management to adapt their end-to-end data processes to favour and support open release.
  • Coordinate data efforts across jurisdictions (starting with states and working upwards), using the approach as a way to standardise on methods of data collection, analysis and reporting so that it becomes possible to compare open data apples with apples. Many data sets are far more valuable across jurisdictions and comparisons help both agencies and the public understand which approaches are working better and why - helping improve policy over time.
  • Legislate to prevent politicians or agencies withholding or delaying data releases due to fear of embarrassment. It is better to be embarrassed and improve outcomes than for it to come out later that government withheld data to protect itself while harming citizen interests - this does long-term damage to the reputation of governments and politicians.
  • Involve industry and the community from the beginning of the open data journey. This involves educating them on open data, what it is and the value it can create, as well as in an ongoing oversight role so they share ownership of the process and are more inclined to actively use data.
  • Maintain an active schedule of data release and activities. Open data sites can become graveyards of old data and declining use without constant injections of content to prompt re-engagement. Different data is valuable to different groups, so having a release schedule (publicly published if possible) provides opportunities to re-engage groups as data valuable to them is released.

Read full post...

Friday, August 23, 2013

Is it possible to deliver a government agency's standard IT systems on a single USB?

CSIR Mk 1 with Hollerith
equipment, Sydney 1952
Source: Museum Victoria
The Australian government was one of the earliest adopters of computers and computerisation.

CSIRAC (or CSIR Mk1), the first computer in Australia (and now the oldest surviving first-generation electronic computer), was used by scientists within CSIRO, by the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Authority and various university and government departments and agencies between 1949 and 1964 to make sense of 'big data' (for the time) which would have taken years to analyse by hand.

As the fifth stored program computer in the world, CSIRAC programmers could write their programs on punch tapes, check them one step at a time, and store them in the computer to be run again and again.

While computers have gotten a lot smaller, faster and efficient, they still use a similar programming approach to CSIRAC. Programs (software) are loaded into their memory and may then be accessed and run many times.

Of course modern computers use different storage mediums and can store and execute many programs at the same time.

Every government agency has an IT architecture made up of hundreds, if not thousands, of different programs - some run on a mainframe computer, others on desktop computers and still more on servers which allow staff to access the programs remotely from their desktop, laptop or even mobile platforms.

It is a very complex process to manage an agency's IT architecture - some programs may not 'play nice' with others, some may be twenty or more years old and require special hardware and maintenance to keep them operating.

Setting up a new agency can be an even more complex process. Often agencies are 'spawned' from existing departments and 'borrow' much of their IT infrastructure - the software required to run everything from payroll and HR to manage contracts, projects, compliance, Ministerial correspondence and provide the desktop applications required by staff to do their jobs.

Even more complex is the process of combining disparate agencies into a new department. This can require blending two or more sets of software programs into a single solution, with all the data migration and management issues this entails - not to mention addressing security considerations, staff training and avoiding long outages or data loss.

This is where my concept of 'government on USB' comes in.

Why not develop all the core software that a government agency needs to operate as open source shareable software and release it for other government agencies to reuse?

Using this approach it is possible that when a government dictates that a new agency must be formed that the CIO simply pulls out his 'Government Agency USB' and uploads all the required operational software as a complete agency package.

Potentially, via this method, a new agency could have all its core ICT systems in place and operating in days, if not hours.

This approach might seem farfetched, however we're already heading in that direction due to a couple of trends.

Today much of the software an agency needs to run its operations is available through SAAS (Software as a Service) or as cloud-based services - which both basically means that software is stored offsite, maintained by a specialist company and simply accessed and used as needed by an agency - provided they are confident of the security levels.

We're also seeing more and more of the software 'building blocks' of organisations becoming available in open source forms which can be downloaded, adjusted as required by an agency and used, either hosted internally or via a SAAS or cloud provided.

The US has actively been developing and releasing software in open source formats for other governments to use, as has the UK and a few other governments around the world. This offers massive national and international efficiencies for governments who can reuse rather than build or buy software.

The next step is for a government to audit the core systems required to establish a new agency and develop a standard IT Architecture that can be applied for any new agency (with room for specialised modules for unique functions). Then, by selecting from existing open source programs and potentially writing additional services, a government could put together a 'flatpack' IT architecture that any new agency could adopt quickly and easily.

If all the software in this 'flatpack' were open source, it could be easily improved and adjusted over time to meet changing legislative and operational requirements and to integrate ongoing improvements and enhancements.

Then once agencies have adopted this common 'flatpack' of software, it would be significantly easier and cheaper to merge agencies, as they would already be operating in a similar and interchangeable way.

Moving all of government across to this approach would take quite a few years - it's not achievable in a single term - however it would provide ultimately for a 'government on USB'.

This also has implications across the developing world and for newly formed countries, where their government agencies and institutions can suffer from a lack of experience, expertise and money to build the robust IT architecture needed for modern nations.

In the scenario I've described, a new or developing government could simply plug in the 'government on USB' into an agency's systems and establish a sophisticated IT environment to underpin governance in a very short period of time.

Is this simply an unattainable pipedream?

Some may scoff at the notion, however there are many people around the world working on parts of the 'government on USB' model today - albeit many may not be thinking about the bigger picture.

Much of the software required for a government agency is already available in open source form, from HR and financial management systems to desktop applications. It simply hasn't been linked together with a single set-up process.

To explore the concept it would take a government willing to innovate, investing resources and money.

This would be used to model the software requirements of an agency, identify where open source solutions exist (or existing solutions can be modified) and write new open source software where necessary.

Next there would be the need to ensure the solution is secure and to write a single set-up approach that makes it easy for a CIO to roll out the solution quickly.

This may not ultimately be possible or cost-effective, but given the cost of IT architecture changes today when creating, merging or updating agencies, surely it is worth considering.

Read full post...

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Sentiment analysis: where 'disabled' and 'disability' are often considered negative terms

It's come to my attention that a number of automated sentiment analysis tools include 'disabled' and 'disability' as negative terms.

This means that when calculating whether a particular statement in social media is positive or negative, the use of these words is used by these sentiment analysis tools as an indication that the statement is negative towards the topic of the statement - such as a topic, issue, individual or organisation.

I've checked a number of sentiment dictionaries online and found that both 'disabled' and 'disability' appear frequently as negative terms. However I have not yet been able to confirm whether any sentiment analysis products treat these words in this manner.

This disturbs me, given the efforts of governments and civic organisations in Australia and many other countries to remove negative stigma attached to the word 'disabled', even given its potential application in statements such as 'their system has been disabled'.

It also concerns me that agencies engaging online about disabilities or with disabled people, might accept that the sentiment reported by their social media monitoring tools indicates negativity where in actuality no negativity exists.

I would caution government agencies using automated sentiment analysis tools to get to know they work and check how terms such as 'disability' and 'disabled' are treated in these systems.

I'd welcome comments from makers of sentiment analysis tools to confirm how they treat these words or from agencies using automated sentiment tracking if they've seen these words or others rated negatively or positively in ways which might be misleading and misrepresent the actual sentiment.

Read full post...

Friday, November 16, 2012

Are organisations failing in their use of social media and apps as customer service channels?

Guy Cranswick of IBRS has brought my attention to a media release about a new report from Fifth Quadrant, a leading Australian customer experience strategy and research consultancy, on social media and smartphone app customer service enquiries.

The report looked at how many Australian consumers had used these channels for customer service enquiries and why they'd used, or not used, them.

The figures are quite dim reading...

The study (of 520 participants) indicated that only 16% of Australian consumers have ever used social media for a customer service enquiry and less than one in 10 Australians had used this channel for customer service in the last three months. Gen Y ran 'hotter', with 29% having ever used social media for a customer service enquiry.

Why didn't people use social media for these enquiries? The survey broke down the reasons as follows (multiple reasons allowed):
  • 32% said it isn't personal, 
  • 30% said they did not know that they could,
  • 30% said they were concerned with security issues,
  • 22% said they thought it would take longer than a phone call, and
  • 20% said they did not think it would be a good experience. 
The research also looked at smartphone apps and their use in customer enquiries. Here the figures were even lower. Only 15% of Australian consumers had ever used a smartphone application for a customer enquiry (20% amongst Gen Y), and only 8% of consumers had used this channel in the last three months.

The reasons for not using apps were similar to social media:
  • 41% said they did not know they could,
  • 21% said they thought it would take longer than a phone call,
  • 16% said they thought it would make the process slower to talk to a customer service representative,
  • 15% said they did not think it would be a good experience, and 
  • 13% said that they did not think it would be easy to use.
My immediate reaction was to say that, well, social media and smartphone apps are still very young and immature, both effectively five or less years old as mass communication and engagement channels. It takes time for organisations and customers to adopt their use for customer service.

However, other research suggests that this may not exactly be the case.

Fifth Quadrant’s 2012 Customer Service Industry Market Report (with 120 business participants) found that 69% of Australian based organisations had implemented social media and 23% had implemented smartphone apps for customer service. This is a small sample, but still statistically significant.

In other words, while 69% of organisations will accept customer service enquiries via social media, only 16% of Australians have used this approach and while 23% accept these enquiries via smartphone apps, only 15% of Australians have used these channels.

So if organisations are offering these channels, why do so few Australians use them?

More of Fifth Quadrant's research offers a clue...

How many times should a customer have to contact an organisation to resolve a customer service issue?

Fifth Quadrant reports that the level of 'first contact resolution' (where a customer only needs to contact an organisation once to have their query resolved) is much lower for social media or smartphone app than for phone contacts.
  • Phone: 78% of queries handled in one contact
  • Social media: 59%
  • Smartphone app: 51%
In other words, 41% of people attempting to use social media and 49% of those using smartphone apps will have to contact the organisation multiple times (often resorting to phone) to resolve their query.

This significantly increases the cost of the interaction to the organisation and the customer and reduces customer satisfaction.

So what's the issue? Poor organisational implementation of social media and app channels.

Fifth Quadrant's Director, Dr Wallace said,
“There is no question that social media and mobile channels will be important in the next few years as the percentage of consumers who use these channels for customer service doubles year on year. Rather, it is a question of how effectively organisations address the supporting business processes and skill levels of social media customer service representatives.

The challenge for Australian business is that they typically do not consider Multi-channel Customer Experience as a strategy, hence these new channels lack integration, they do not have accurate revenue and cost models and there is poor data analytics. This has resulted in a sub-optimal channel deployment and as the research shows, ultimately, a sub-optimal customer experience.”

So let's go back to the reasons again...
  • There was an awareness issue (social media: 30%; apps: 41%).
    Organisations need to integrate information about the ability to engage them through social media and apps in their promotion, packaging and engagement.
  • There was a speed/perceived speed issue (social media: 22% (take longer); apps: 21% (take longer) and 16% (slower)).
    Organisations need to integrate these channels with their other customer contact points, building the protocols and processes to make it faster and easier to engage online than by phone.
  • There was an experience/usability issue (social media: 30% (not personal), 20% (experience); apps: 15% (experience) and 13% (easy to use)).
    Organisations need to codesign their channels with customers, putting extensive work into the upfront experiential design to make them an easy to use service with a great user experience. The investment in design is more than offset by the long-term cost savings in moving people from high-cost phone to low cost online service channels.
  • There was a security issue (social media 30%).
    Organisations need to take the same actions as ecommerce companies did to reduce this to a minimum, providing context, clear security measures and escalation and rectification mechanisms that assure users that they won't be disadvantaged by any security problems.
Overall, organisations need to run these channels as part of their customer service framework, not remotely via communication, marketing or IT teams.

Want to learn more about the research and report?

See Dr Wallace's blog, Your call.

And here are some of the key findings from Fifth Quadrant’s 2012 Customer Service Industry Market Report (n=120):

Social Media:
  1. In Australia, the predominant share of the 22 million daily customer interactions handled by contact centres is still handled by live agents (52%). Despite industry increasing the implementation of social media as a customer service channel, Share of Contact Handling by Social Media channels is 0.2%
  2. Amongst organisations that offer social media as a channel for customer service, 67% report that the marketing department is responsible for managing it.
  3. 63% of organisations in the study have only had social media as a channel for customer service implemented for 1 to 2 years.
  4. Amongst organisations that currently have social media as a customer service channel only 29% reported their contact centre has the ability to escalate a social media query through to a customer support application that links through to an agent.
  5. Past three months usage of social media as a customer service channel has doubled in the past 12 months (4% 2011; 8% 2012).
  6. The proportion of consumers who believe they will be using social media more often in the future has also nearly doubled from 4% in 2011 to 7% in 2012. 
  7. When asked whether they had received a response from an organisation via a Social Media network to comments they had made through Social Media, only 7% of consumers reported that they had. About 5% of consumers claim to have received essential information posted via a Social Media network. 14% of consumers report they have received information from an organisation via social media about new products and services. 
Smartphone Apps:
  1. Amongst organisations that offer smartphone apps as a channel for customer service 50% report that the marketing department is responsible for managing it, with a further 33% reporting that IT is responsible.
  2. 50% have only had smartphone apps as a channel for customer service implemented for one to two years, with 33% reporting smartphone app has been available for less than 12 months. 
  3. Amongst organisations that do not currently offer smartphone app as a channel for customer service, 25% report they have no plans to. 
  4. Further to the existing 8% of consumers who have used a smartphone app for customer service, a further 33% of consumers report that they are likely to use a smartphone app for a customer service enquiry in the next 12 months. 
  5. Amongst Gen Y consumers, 29% report that they will be using smartphone apps for customer service issues more often in the next 1-2 years. This is significantly higher compared to Baby Boomer (8%) and Silent (4%) generations.

Read full post...

Thursday, November 01, 2012

Register now for November's Canberra Gov 2.0 lunchtime event

It took a little while to pull together, but November's Canberra Gov 2.0 lunchtime event is now open for registration at: gov20november2012.eventbrite.com

With a focus on mobile app development and digital accessibility, the event is being held in DEEWR's Theatre at 50 Marcus Clarke Road from midday - 1pm on Friday, 16th November.

That means there's only two weeks to register, so get in fast!

More about the speakers:

Jake MacMullin is an independent iOS & mobile specialist. He creates iPhone and iPad apps for clients and provides training and mentoring to organisations seeking to develop in-house expertise. He developed the ABC's iview app for iPhone and iPad, now used by millions of people.

Jake is developing an iPad app to allow people to explore the National Library's digital collection of sheet music. After discovering the dataset on data.gov.au Jake developed a proof-of-concept app and realised it might be something the National Library would be interested in. In this presentation Jake will describe how he's now working with the National Library to turn this proof-of-concept in to an actual product.


Gian Wild is the Founder and Director of AccessibilityOz (www.accessibilityoz.com.au), a consultancy that supports local, state and federal Government agencies in the accessibility area.

She has worked in the accessibility industry since 1998, working on the first AAA accessible web site in Australia (Disability Information Victoria) and ran the accessibility consultancy PurpleTop from 2000 to 2005, building the accessibility tool, PurpleCop.

Gian was a Member of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group from May 2000 to August 2006, involved in writing the WCAG 2.0 specification. She is also a highly regarded presenter and trainer on accessibility and has twice been the Accessibility Judge for FullCodePress (www.fullcodepress.com) and is the Accessibility Judge for the Australian Web Awards (www.webawards.com.au).

Read full post...

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Are Australia's web developers failing to deliver accessible websites?

In a recent story in ITNews, Accessibility checker surfaces errors, John Hibbert claimed that a new Mental Health website, www.mindhealthconnect.org.au, operated by the National Health Call Centre Network and funded by the Department of Health and Ageing, didn't meet the Australian Government's minimum web standards.

Based on a review using the ACheck tool for the minimum WCAG 2.0 'A' level of compliance, John reported that the checker:
highlighted two known problems, 245 "potential problems", 20 HTML validation errors and 115 cascading style sheet problems on the site.
I tend to always take the results of these tools with a grain of salt. Many of the reported validation errors and style sheet issues are often repeats of one single issue, or are not really issues at all, and the two known problems would take a couple of minutes to fix and do not pose direct accessibility risks at all.

However this article does highlight a concern I've had for several years - whether Web Developers, contracted to produce these sites for government, always have the appropriate skills and knowledge to develop accessible websites.

I've seen this type of issue repeated a number of times. A policy or program area, possibly with support from a central communication or IT area, goes out to tender for a website. Web Developers respond, get assessed and the successful tenderer goes about creating the site.

A few months later the site is complete with days to spare before the Ministerial launch - but fails accessibility testing by the agency.

"We didn't understand how important accessibility was to you" says the Web Developer. Note that I was in the room when these exact words were said to an agency by a reputable web developer regarding a website which was developed iteratively and we'd been giving them feedback about accessibility for a number of weeks.

So what happens next?

If accessibility was not explicit mentioned in the contract, the Web Developer asks for more cash to meet the requirement, even though it is a baseline requirement for all government websites across Australia, and says it won't be ready for launch.

If an accessibility level was explicitly agreed to in the contract, the Web Developer grudgingly assigns a junior developer to 'sort it out' - with a vague promise that it will be done in a few weeks or months.

The agency is left having to launch a website which doesn't meet the minimum and fix it as soon as possible afterwards - all because the Web Developer didn't recognise and act on the legal requirement for accessibility.

Of course there's many examples where Web Developers have done exceptional accessibility work for agencies, however I have seen and heard too many issues where professional Web Developers didn't understand the accessibility requirements of governments.

Delivering an inaccessible website to a government agency will cause that agency to break the law and expose it to enormous risks of legal damages. No vendor should ever put their client in this type of position knowingly, particularly where it is so easily avoidable.

My view is that any Web Developer that doesn't deliver a government website to at least the minimum accessible standards (unless otherwise explicitly agreed to by the agency in question) should not receive any payment until they have addressed all accessibility issues.

They should also lose their right to bid for other government business until they can prove they have fully trained their staff on accessible web design.

These may be harsh and strong measures, and I doubt they will be considered due to contractual and practical issues.

However if a vendor contracted to sell a government agency a car that turned out to not be street legal or rent them a building that turned out to not meet the building code, government would walk away without paying and ask for damages, plus be very cautious about working with that vendor again.

Why should it be any different with illegal websites?

Read full post...

Monday, May 14, 2012

Accessibility - a great video from FaHCSIA to educate staff & management

Last week FaHCSIA released a great video on accessibility that they're using to educate staff and management on its importance, who it affects and the basics of what to do.

I think it is an awesome resource for all organisations (not just government) to help them understand their legal obligation and how to meet it.

We need more resources like this for government, tools that use video, pictures and sound to help educate and influence, not simply more PDF manuals like this.

I've embedded the video below and it is also available directly from its YouTube link or as a MP3 from FAHCSIA's resources section.

Read full post...

Friday, April 13, 2012

My University - a great site (except for mobile users)

I like the MyUniversity website - it's clean, useful and mostly simple.

However, when using it the other day I found one extremely major flaw. It's not mobile friendly.

I recently reported that 47% of internet connections in Australia were now via mobile devices. This was based on an ABS report from the December quarter of 2011.

In other words, if your website isn't usable on a mobile device you are potentially only servicing 53% of the market.

On that basis there's a strong requirement for all organisations, including government agencies, to develop their sites to function effectively on mobile platforms.
At this point it's worth talking about how and why I had issues.

My son is at a point where he's beginning to think about life after school and wants to know the options he has available, so I went on an exploratory trip into MyUniversity to see what was available in his areas of interest before taking him through it.

So I first went to the course search tool, to look for appropriate courses and entered in the topic he was interested in (it looks like below).
Initial course search screen in the MyUniversity website on iPad
Initial course search screen in the MyUniversity website on iPad

I got to the provider search tool and tried to use it - clicking on the box only works if, on a mobile device, you click precisely on the small '0 items' text in the middle. However this wasn't the main issue (though te size of the clickable area is a secondary issue, and why are universities called 'items'?)

When I clicked on the text the list of options, as below appeared.
Clicked on '0 items' in left-hand box in the course search screen
Clicked on '0 items' in left-hand box in the course search screen

I then selected QLD universities and a tick appeared (as below) - all good so far...
Clicked on 'QLD universities' in left-hand box
Clicked on 'QLD universities' in left-hand box

However this is where the trouble started. I selected 'Done' and the selection box disappeared.

The main window, however, still showed '0 items' (as below). But had't I just selected an item? Very confusing for users.

I checked several times by reclicking '0 items' and each time the selection box told me that yes I had chosen QLD universities.

So I decided OK, this is bad, but I will trust the system has remembered my choice despite not providing any cue to tell me this.

(BTW I had to ignore the text cue under the box 'Hold the CTRL key to select multiple items' as this doesn't apply on mobile devices)
After clicking 'Done', the left box reverts to '0 items'
After clicking 'Done', the left box reverts to '0 items'



So next was the task of transferring my selection to the right-hand box (an entirely meaningless step) before a search could be performed.

So I clicked on the 'Add' button.

And nothing changed....

Both the left-hand and right-hand boxes continued stating '0 items'.

I clicked it several times, just in case I had done it wrong (a usual user reaction when they receive no indication that their action has been received and acted on).

Then I did click on the (too small) '0 items' text in the right-hand box and the following selection box appeared.

So my selection DID get transferred.
Clicked on '0 item's in the right-hand box of the screen
Clicked on '0 item's in the right-hand box of the screen




I then selected 'QLD universities' AGAIN in this selection window. The second time I had to select it (as below).
Clicked on 'QLD universities' in the right-hand box
Clicked on 'QLD universities' in the right-hand box
Then I clicked 'Done' and found myself back at the initial screen - with '0 items' in both the left-hand and right-hand boxes (as below).
'QLD universities' now appears in the right-hand area
'QLD universities' now appears in the right-hand area

Sigh.

So I then chanced fate and clicked search - and the course selector worked as intended - finding me QLD universities with the selected course.

However let's recap the issues:

  1. Selection areas too small
  2. Lack of visual cues for user actions
  3. Need to repeat actions which could be performed once to achieve the same objective
  4. Poor labelling of fields
  5. Generally clumsy interface poorly designed for mobile use
  6. No consideration of the differences in how web browsers may treat fields across versions and platforms
  7. Clearly no cross-platform user testing

All-in-all, a very poor interface for mobile users.

Just in case I was unique in having this issue, I put my iPad in front of five other smart, university-educated adults and two teenagers considering university and asked them to complete a task to find a set of courses for a particular topic across universities in two states.

None of them were able to complete the task in under ten minutes using the MyUniversity interface, and only one (of the adults - the teens lost interest and went to Google) stayed with it and finally managed to get the search results they wanted - after receiving eight error messages (because they hadn't clicked in the right-hand box and selected the universities they wanted a second time).

Usability is important. A multi-million dollar project can fail if there isn't sufficient attention paid to the user interface.


Of course there may be an argument that a particular site has low usage by mobile users and therefore development dollars should be invested elsewhere. This sounds perfectly legitimate.

However this perspective raises some serious questions:
  1. Are the agency's figures correct? Many mobile browsers report as standard web browsers, so it's not always clear when a web browser is in use on a mobile device.
  2. Is the mobile usage low because the site's audience don't use mobile devices, or because the site is unusable on mobile platforms? Perhaps the poor mobile design is why mobile users shun it - which then reflects in low mobile statistics and an argument by the organisation to not support mobile, ad infinitum....
  3. Isn't it irrelevant whether mobile usage is low? Government agencies are required to provide services accessible to all citizens, not just ones who happen to use desktop and laptop computers. Surely it's not that hard or expensive, in most cases, to ensure your interface is usable on mobile devices - millions of other website do it with little or no investment using inbuilt features in modern content management systems. An argument that you use an old CMS is not easily supportable, particularly when new systems cost very little to purchase or implement (depending on the level of customisation).
  4. Even if it's too expensive or difficult to justify building an interface which is both desktop and mobile compatible in the first place, aren't there accessibility requirements which websites (particularly government sites) must meet? If a website isn't mobile compatible it may also not be accessible on a desktop computer to users with some forms of accessibility needs.

I hope that the agency responsible for My University does consider what it can do to become more mobile friendly. It's not really a hard fit, just change one step in a process and the problem would be resolved.

Then their site would be useful to 100% of Australian internet users, not to only 53% of them.

Read full post...

Monday, April 02, 2012

Remove PDFs from your site to save money and increase traffic by 160x - the experience of the Vic Department of Primary Industries

While there may now be accessibility techniques for PDFs, this doesn't mean that the format is necessarily the most appropriate for displaying information on the web and attracting usage, as the Victorian Department of Primary Industries discovered when they removed all PDFs from their website and converted them to web pages.


As reported in thw case study, Unlock valuable content trapped in PDFs from BriarBird (as brought to my attention by Gian Wild's blog), the Department of Primary Industries Systems and Technical Manager Mark Bryant found that, 

“As we converted more and more PDFs to HTML/web format, the stats just kept going up and up until we reached around 1.6 million extra page views per year – it was fantastic.”

Mark also said in the case study that,
“Our users were telling us they wanted to do things in a different way, and when we converted a few PDFs to web pages we found the web pages outperformed PDF by as much as 160 to one.

“Initially we tried to create a web page to match each PDF, but in the end we introduced a blanket rule – no PDFs as it was far too difficult to manage both formats,” Mark said.

“There was some resistance, but the business case is pretty simple when you can show that a web page is being read around 160 times more often than a PDF.

“If you are spending money preparing content for the web, then that money is essentially being wasted if that content is locked up in a format people are unwilling to use.”
Over the last ten years I've also consistently noticed a ratio of 100:1 or more for views to webpages vs PDFs in the websites I've managed.

While PDFs often suit content creators (who are used to MS Word), they are rarely the best format for online content recipients - your audience.

If your organisation is focused on having the customer at the centre it is worth reviewing your content creation and distribution approach to ensure it aligns with customer needs.

For example, where a printable version is required, it is possible to achieve this with a print template for web pages using style sheets (CSS) rather than with a PDF. In effect when people click 'print' the web page is automatically reformated for A4 printing. This makes updating much faster and easier as you only have to maintain one version of the content.

So why not save PDFs for when they are most needed and wanted and ensure that the majority of your content is 'native' using web pages. Your audiences will love you for it.

Read full post...

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

The perils of legislating channels (and the issue of website filters)

The Australian Parliament House recently released their new website - a major step-up from the previous site.

However in reading an article about it on ZDNet I discovered that the APH had, in the process, decided to block an entire top-level domain (.info) from view by the Parliament and the thousands of people working at Parliament House in order to prevent access to potentially malicious websites.

I haven't been a fan of the internet filtering systems used in government. At varying times I have seen the websites of all the major Australian political parties blocked, preventing access to their media releases, blog posts and announcements - often vital information for public servants writing policy or briefs.

These filters can be quite indiscriminate and are often controlled by commercial parties outside government. That's right, commercial entities, often foreign owned, can be broadly controlling what is allowable for Australian public servants to view online. This could affect government information inputs and potentially influence policy decisions. This is a situation that leaves me vaguely uncomfortable.

Some of the individual categories of content blocked can be equally problematic. For example many filters block access to generally to 'blogs', which may include the Australian Public Service Commission's blog-based consultation of public servants last year, 'video sites', including, for Immigration, their own YouTube channel, social networks (including those used by citizens to discuss specific policies) and, in a range of other cases, 'political' content from citizens and stakeholder groups that could otherwise be influential in the development and implementation of good policy.

One of the biggest issues I have personally found is that you don't know what you don't know. Could a blocked site be vitally important for the decision you need to make? You cannot assess this if you can't look at it.

Some systems allow specific blocking by group of employee - which sounds useful and often is (for example when I worked at ActewAGL I was one of the few allowed to view adult (soft porn) sites, needed in my role of preparing website schedules and analysing the competition for the adult channel TransACT displayed). However when implemented poorly staff may not be able to access the information their managers direct them to use.

In certain cases public servants may be required to use their personal devices to rapidly access critical content blocked by these filters. This is one reason why, for the last four years, I have carried my own Internet-connected device with me while working in government agencies. It makes me more productive in meetings and in preparing business cases when I can access and refer to critical material immediately, rather than not being able to even see if a site may be valuable or not and then waiting for a site to be unblocked so I can access it on a work PC.

It can be time consuming and, in some cases, impossible to request opening sites up. In many cases public servants can ask for specific exceptions, however when you have 48 hours to finish a minute to your Minister in response to public stakeholder or citizen comments on an important piece of proposed legislation, it can be impossible to do the job properly. Identifying which sites you need to see, receiving senior approval, requesting and having IT teams or filtering companies make access available, can take weeks, or even months.

This damages the ability for departments to do their jobs for the government and the public and, quite frankly, delegitimizes those citizens and stakeholders who choose to use forums, blogs, Facebook, YouTube and similar social tools or sites to discuss their views.

Blocking an entire top level domain, as in the APH case, comes with additional risks.

A little known fact is that Australian legislation requires the use of info.au for the Quitnow website, an ongoing major component of the Australian Government's campaign to reduce the instance of smoking.

Quitnow.info.au is advertised on all material for the quit campaign, including on all cigarette packets in Australia.

Now in practice the Department operating this site automatically forwards anyone who types 'Quitnow.info.au' to 'Quitnow.gov.au', so it is not noticeable to citizens. However this is a technical translation (if x go to y) - the domain that citizens see on advertising material still says Quitnow.info.au

If .info.au domains, as well as .info domains, were automatically blocked by the APH (I don't know if this is the case), anyone who tried to go to Quitnow.info.au would arrive at a "you cannot access this site" page and not be forwarded to the Quitnow.gov.au site.

Fortunately the APH does allow staff to request access to specific sites (apparently at least 60 have been opened up to access) and I don't have specific information on whether the APH blocked .info.au sites alongside .info sites, so this specific problem may not exist. However it does demonstrate the risks of blocking entire top level domain groups.

Personally I don't think legislation should specify domains or specific communication channels, in most cases. Technology changes too fast and governments don't want to be caught spending exorbitant funds in supporting defunct channels after the community moves on.

For example, the tabling of documents in parliament should not specifically require a paper copy to be presented and there should be no legislation that requires that a citizen present their claims or complaints via a particular device - postal, phone, fax or web.

Equally governments should not be constrained by legislation to communicating with citizens via postal mail, email, fax or a specific form of written communication (as some legislation does now).

The information transmission and reception mechanisms should simply need to meet levels of modern usage and veracity.

This would prevent agencies from having to spend large amounts of money on preserving and using old technologies where communities have moved on and reduce the time and cost of updating legislation to meet community needs.

Is there a downside of not specifying channels (such as that Quitnow.info.au domain) in legislation? I don't think so. Specification, where required, can happen at the policy level, making it easier and more cost-effective to review and change when the environment changes.

This would remove any potential embarrassments, such as if a government agency does block staff access from an entire domain group (such as .info.au) and accidentally block access to its own legislated websites.

Read full post...

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Where's the carrot for accessibility?

Possibly the hottest topic for Australian government web managers this year is 'accessibility', following on from the release of the Web Accessibility National Transition Strategy by AGIMO (the Australian Government Information Management Office).

The strategy confirmed the Australian Government's adoption of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2 (WCAG 2.0) from the World-Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the premier global standards setting organisation for the Internet, as well as the mandatory timeframe for accessibility compliance by government agencies.

In speaking to people within agencies who are not directly in web areas, but who are commissioning, funding and filling websites with content, for the most part I have found they were unaware of the government's accessibility requirements. A regular question was, "is this a new requirement?" and when told that accessibility requirements had been around for more than ten years and the Disability Discrimination Act since 1992, the reactions varied from surprise to anger - that they'd never been told before.

There's also uncertainty and some anxiety about meeting the requirements, which still look like black magic to those new to the topic. Is an accessible PDF good enough? How do we know if it is a decorative or meaningful image? Can we use Facebook if it isn't accessible? How do we add closed captions or transcripts to unscripted user-generated videos? Do we have to convert all PDF submissions to consultations into HTML? Are we funded for accessibility?

Agencies are coming to understand the need for accessibility, and the risks. However where's the carrots?

At the moment there's no real kudos for agencies that meet accessibility requirements. No recognition for complying, public mention of best practice examples or awards for high achievement.

Of course it could be argued that meeting the accessibility requirements is a given and no-one should be rewarded for complying with legal requirements they need to meet.

However humans are complex creatures and respond both to punishments and rewards. Public servants need acknowledgement for good work as much, if not more, than they require chastisement for bad.

I would like to see more opportunities to recognize the agencies who are best at meeting their accessibility obligations as well as mechanisms to identify and name the worst.

Do you agree - should there be acknowledgements for good accessibility practice?

Or is it a given that all agencies should meet without reward?

Read full post...

Monday, April 18, 2011

Advertising agencies, digital agencies, web developers & printers - you need to understand government's online requirements

It has been an interesting experience working with advertising and digital agencies, web developers and printers while in government - particularly having been on the other side myself for more than ten years.

While some are very good, others definitely 'need development' - particularly in the web delivery space.

Government has a number of requirements for websites and other online properties, however it sometimes appears that these are not always well understood by service providers - or maybe it is simply that some may occasionally seek to 'cut corners' on quality to increase profit margins.
 Service providers are expect to know the mandatory government web requirements when responding to government tenders. As AGIMO states in the WebGuide:
Service providers should be familiar with the Mandatory Requirements and the other guidance provided by the Web Guide when responding to Australian Government tender processes for relevant services.
Below is a list of things that service providers really, really need to know when building Australian Government websites:
  • Complying with WCAG's accessibility minimums is a mandatory requirement for government
    I've been told by supposedly experienced (private sector) web developers that the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 doesn't apply to government, and that it is optional for governments to meet WCAG requirements as it is a 'non binding international agreement'.
    I've also been told by web developers that they won't implement some accessibility features because they 'believe the site is accessible enough already' - despite not meeting WCAG standards.
  • A scanned document turned into a PDF isn't accessible under WCAG 2.0
    Telling me that a scanned document - essentially an image - is accessible to screenreaders if it is converted to PDF doesn't communicate that you're a 'web professional with more than 10 years experience'.
    A Microsoft Word document or InDesign file converted to a PDF also won't meet the Australian Government's minimum standards.
    When you provide PDFs to government, if you are not also providing the content in an alternative accessible format, you will often not meet your contractual requirements.
  • You must include a privacy statement, disclaimer and appropriate copyright notices on government websites
    Telling government staff that a 'Website privacy policy is only necessary if you're collecting email addresses or other information online' is incorrect and creates significant risk for your client.

  • Government Departments can use social media channels
    There is no stricture forbidding Government agencies from using social media channels for communication or engagement activities. In fact many already do - and often in more advanced ways than the private sector.
    There's also no 'conclusive study showing that Australians don't want to associate with agencies or government campaigns via social media channels'.
    There's also limited need for government to engage 'social media experts' who don't understand how to use social media services - such as having a Twitter account that doesn't use hashtags or retweet others or writing a Facebook strategy that just lists the standard Tabs and doesn't provide evidence of expertise in using 3rd party applications or iframes to customise a Page.

    Having an account illustrates you're aware of a channel, using the account well demonstrates your expertise.
  • Building a fake persona on a social media channel then revealing it as fake and a government promotion can be considered false and misleading practice
    Suggesting to a government agency that they should create fake personas and interact as though they were real, build a following or trusting friends and then unveiling the activity as a campaign at the end isn't good advice to provide any organisation.
    Sure there's LonelyGirl and the Jacket Girl, and several other instances of actors used to create fake personas - but never by government agencies. Providing the truth is important in government campaigns and being authentic is important to build trust and respect online. Creating fake personas usually isn't conducive to these and can also break the acceptable usage terms of services such as Facebook (which you should read).
Finally here's some tips - collected from discussions with my peers across a range of government agencies and jurisdictions:
  • We don't need you to build us a CMS and we don't want to finance the creation of your own 'you-beaut' in-house CMS and then pay you every time we need it upgraded. Consider building expertise in an off-the-shelf product - particularly an open source platform with global support.
  • Frontpage doesn't qualifies as a modern web development tool used by experienced professionals. It also leaves code in your pages if you don't edit it out (caught!)
  • We do often notice when you copy code and leave the original author's name and credentials in the (web page) source without appropriately compensating or crediting them.
  • Everyone knows that designers love arty fonts, but if the government agency doesn't own the rights to them they can't use them. 
  • Making all the text links in a website into images isn't a good idea - it makes them inaccessible!
  • Audience usability testing should almost always be a required step in web design. Even if your random sample of three staff really liked the design and could use the functionality, what does the website's audience think?
  • Background music is never acceptable in a website. Self-playing video is only acceptable where there's accessible alternatives and the video can be controlled by the user.
  • Government agencies don't want to pay for your custom reporting system that only you can access so you can give us interpreted results for web traffic. Use a standard web-based platform and give the agency access to the reports.
  • Don't tell agencies it will cost $5,000 per month to host a small government website via your ISP. Particularly when their website lists their prices (up to $30 per month) - oops!
  • When a government agency asks for an email newsletter system with double opt-in subscription, bounce detection, automated unsubscribe, open and click-through reporting, simply using a web-form to collect email addresses and sending emails via Outlook is not a quality outcome.
  • When asked to design a website for an agency to implement in-house, don't provide code or custom functionality that can't be used or build on the agency's platform.
  • It doesn't cost $10,000 to add a share button / reporting system / embed a YouTube video into the website - particularly when the agency is providing all the code for you.
  • You're not a 'Government 2.0 pioneer' if you've never heard of the Gov 2.0 Taskforce, the eGovernment Resource Centre or this blog. Knowing Obama used social media in his first Presidential campaign no longer earns brownie points.
  • Even if this is 'the first time' a government agency has asked you to make a website or PDF accessible to WCAG 2.0 standards, that doesn't mean that your previous standard will meet current government needs.
  • Just because your contact in government hasn't had previous experience developing websites doesn't mean they aren't supported by people who have a lot of experience.
Any other gems out there that people are prepared to share?

Read full post...

Thursday, November 18, 2010

The danger of permanent internet exclusion to egovernment and Gov 2.0

The internet is increasingly defining the 21st century.

It has become the primary medium used to find and share information, the most commonly used news and entertainment medium and has unleashed an outpouring of creativity which commentators, such as Clay Shirky have described as "the greatest in human history".

Equally there have been pressures to constrain aspects of the internet. Around the world a number of nations are blocking access to certain pages, websites and services - sometimes based on concerns on the appropriateness of content, sometimes due to economic or political pressure.

There have even been attempts, spearheaded by significant copyright holders, to block internet access for significant periods of time - or even permanently - from households or individuals accused of repeated copyright violations.

This last topic is worth debate in a eGovernment and Gov 2.0 context.

As governments shift information, services and engagement activities online there is greater expectation - and hope - that citizens will use the internet to interact with agencies.

By shifting services online governments can cut offices and employ less phone staff.

In a country where all citizens have the right to access the internet this is not an issue. Anyone who can engage online is encouraged to do so and offline government services can be reconfigured to suit audiences who are unable or unwilling to use the internet. Everyone wins.

However what happens in a nation where internet access can be denied to otherwise capable citizens, either for long periods of time or permanently?

What is the commercial impact after television and telephony have migrated to a (for instance) national broadband network? How would this distort these peoples' access to government services? What additional costs (at taxpayer expense) would government be forced to incur to service these people effectively? Does it exclude them from democratic participation or from vital health and welfare information?

I can't see any nation deciding to permanently cut access to an individual or household's telephony services because they used it to make a few abusive calls. Neither can I see any state denying a household access to electricity or water because one resident was convicted several times for growing illicit drugs via a hydroponic system in their bedroom.

However there are real threats emerging around the world that some individuals or households may be permanently excluded from online participation based on accusations, or convictions, for a few minor offenses.


An example is France, which enacted a 'three strikes' law in 2009. Reportedly record companies are now sending 25,000 complaints per day via ISPs to French citizens they are accusing of flouting copyright laws.

Under the law French citizens receive two warnings and can then be disconnected from their ISP and placed on a 'no internet' blacklist - denying them access to the online world, potentially permanently.

While this approach was designed to discourage illegal activity, early indications are that this doesn't appear to have succeeded as piracy may have risen. It also, apparently, has annoyed US law enforcement agencies as it may encourage greater use of freely available, industrial strength, encryption technologies, thereby making it much harder to distinguish between major criminal organisations and file downloaders and hurting law enforcement activities.

This is similar to an often-repeated storyline in Superman comics, when Superman can identify criminals as they are the only ones using lead shielding on their homes to block his X-Ray vision. If everyone used lead shielding, Superman couldn't tell the bad guys from the good guys (there's a future storyline for DC).


Most importantly a 'three strikes and you're off' approach - or equivalent law - risks permanently excluding people from the most important 21st century medium, simply for being accused three times of copyright violation. Arguably, in today's world, that's a much more severe judgement than people receive for multiple murders, rapes or armed robbery.

I don't see the Australian government rushing to embrace a similar approach, however it still raises the question of whether we need to consider internet access as a right at the same level as access to electricity or telephones.

Other nations are considering this as well. Several European countries have already declared internet access a fundamental human right, including France, which places the country in an interesting position.

The European Union (of which France is a member) has rejected a 3-strike law and, as Boing Boing reported, progressive MEPs wrote a set of "Citizens Rights" amendments that established that internet access was a fundamental right that cannot be taken away without judicial review and actual findings of wrongdoing.

As the internet has now moved from a 'nice-to-have' service to a 'must-have' utility for many people, even actual findings of wrongdoing may no longer be sufficient reason to permanently exclude people. In fact this may be legally impossible to enforce anyway, due to public access and mobile services.

Given the potential negative impacts on democratic participation, the ongoing cost to government and the potential commercial and social impacts - should it be possible for a government to legislate, a court to dictate or for ISPs to refuse to connect some citizens to the internet permanently?

Read full post...

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

UK redevelops legislative database to support and encourage reuse

Brought to my attention by Mia Garlick via Twitter, the UK has redeveloped its legislative database with a focus on reuse by external parties.

The recently released site legislation.gov.uk covers 800 years of legislation from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

According to an article from Cornell University Law School, Legislation.gov.uk, John Sheridan, Head of e-Services and Strategy at The National Archives says that the site was designed to meet two objectives,

to deliver a high quality public service for people who need to consult, cite, and use legislation on the Web; and to expose the UK’s Statute Book as data, for people to take, use, and re-use for whatever purpose or application they wish.
The Crown Copyright for the site specifies that,
You are encouraged to use and re-use the information that is available on this site freely and flexibly, with only a few conditions.

This type of approach makes legislation vastly more accessible to the public and, through an API provided by the site, supports the development of applications and services that assist the public, organisations and lawyers to understand and apply the law.

More information on why and how the site was designed is available in the article referenced above.

Australia isn't yet at the same point. Our legislation, detailed at Comlaw, is not yet supported through APIs or other machine-readable data formats and is covered under a more restrictive licensing regime,
This work is copyright. You may download, display, print and reproduce this material in unaltered form only (retaining this notice) for your personal, non-commercial use or use within your organisation. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, all other rights are reserved.

Read full post...

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

AGIMO invites participation and guest blogging on accessibility matters

AGIMO's latest blog post, Welcome to the WCAG 2.0 Community of Expertise (CoE), has invited those with an interest or involvement with accessibility matters to join a new Community of Expertise or provide guest posts to the AGIMO blog.

Related to the endorsement of WCAG 2.0 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0) by the Australian government earlier this year, AGIMO has established the Community of Expertise to encourage collaboration in developing advice, techniques and resources to implement WCAG 2.0.

Those from the public and private sectors are both invited to join the Community.

To learn more, and for an update on AGIMO's progress in developing support resources aiding agencies in WCAG 2.0 adoption, visit AGIMO's blog at Govspace.

Read full post...

Monday, March 01, 2010

Australian Government endorses WCAG 2.0 - stipulates compliance by 2015

Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner and Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities Bill Shorten issued a joint media release last Tuesday 23 February confirming that the Australian Government had endorsed the W3C's latest accessibility standard, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (or WCAG 2.0).

The media release also indicated that the Minister and Parliamentary Secretary are stipulating that all (Australian) government websites adhere to these new standards by 2015. Given it took

The Government is preparing a National Transition Strategy for the move, however there's plenty of resources already available on the web about how to switch to WCAG 2.0 - as the new standard has been out for about 14 months.

I am hopeful that government professionals responsible for the design, technical and content changes and strategies will work together across agencies to build their knowledge and expertise on the topic - we are all in this together and there are a number of highly experienced accessibility experts dotted across the public sector.

Perhaps this is an opportunity for AGIMO to expand its Web Publishing Guide Blog to encourage cross-government professional discussion on the topic of accessibility and implementing WCAG 2.0.

Read full post...

Bookmark and Share