WCAG 2.0 (finally) released

The W3C has finally released the final version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0.

Announced in a press release this morning Australian time, W3C Web Standard Defines Accessibility for Next Generation Web, the W3C states that,

This new standard from the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) will advance accessibility across the full range of Web content (such as text, images, audio, and video) and Web applications. WCAG 2.0 can be more precisely tested, yet it allows Web developers more flexibility and potential for innovation. Together with supporting technical and educational materials, WCAG 2.0 is easier to understand and use.

AGIMO was surveying Government agencies regarding their views on mandating WCAG 2.0 for the Australian government. I'm looking forward to the outcomes from this.

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Why do concerns about Flash persist?

For the last ten years I've been making use of Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) within websites to provide rich content features and applications unattainable with HTML.

Unfortunately I still get asked the same questions about Flash, regarding accessibility, file size and how many users have the technology.

I'd like to put these to bed.

Flash is an accessible format (meets the W3C's requirements in the WCAG), usage is extremely high (over 95%) and file size for downloading is no longer an issue (Flash files are often smaller than equivalents, due to compression and effective streaming).

I've provided more detail in my full post below.

During the late 1990s and early 2000s there were valid concerns over how many people could access Flash files and whether their size would cause issues for dial-up users.

There were also accessibility concerns, which more often reflected the level of production values for Flash in Australia, rather than actual issues with the platform.

I've noticed that there are still many Flash 'doubters' about raising the same concerns as were raised ten years ago.

• How many people have Flash on their computers?
• Are the files too large for dial-up users?
• Is it accessible?

Fortunately there are some easy ways to put these concerns to rest.

Penetration rate - how many people have Flash?
Adobe representatives I have heard speaking at events regularly state that Flash penetration is greater than 97% in the western world - including countries such as Australia.

Ironically PDF penetration (also an Adobe created format) is slightly lower than this - so on that basis it would be better to provide content in Flash format rather than PDF.

Taking Adobe's self-promotion with a grain of salt, it is easy for organisations to check Flash penetration for their own website audience using their web reporting tools. Where their reporting doesn't provide this statistic, free web reporting tools such as Google Analytics do and can be easily and rapidly added to a site (via a small code block).

For example, for my agency's website, for the last month, Google Analytics tells me that 98.27% of website visitors had Flash installed (and 95% of visitors had Flash 9.0+ or later). This is even higher than that claimed by Adobe, and makes me very comfortable in advocating Flash use within it.

File size versus connection speed
It's also possible via web reporting to track the connection speed of website visitors. This will verify what percentage use broadband versus dial-up, and indicates what percentage are more capable of receiving larger files (250kb+).

This can be useful when validating the use of Flash, which appears to be larger than HTML pages (though often is smaller). However be careful when simply relying on a high broadband penetration rate to validate the use of Flash.

Often Flash is faster than HTML for delivering similar dynamic content. This is because of two reasons, 

• to achieve the same outcome with DHTML (Dynamic HTML) requires much larger files and,
  
• because Flash is a compressed format designed to stream information over time - therefore the user doesn't have to wait for the entire file to download before they can view it (as they must with MS Word files).
  

Due to straming even large Flash files do not take long to start running on the user's system, meaning that the raw file size is less important.

A recent experience we've had in our agency was in considering file sizes for internal elearning modules. In comparing the same module as a Flash file and as a DHTML (Dynamic HTML) file our experience was that the DHTML file was up to 10x as large in size - making Flash a far better option for sites with lower bandwidths.

There are also techniques to reduce the impact on users with slow internet connections, such as detecting the connection speed and running video at lower resolution or asking dial-up users to choose whether they want to wait for a Flash version or see a basic text page.

Flash accessibility
The simple answer for accessibility is that Flash is fully compliant with the W3C and US Government's Section 508 accessibility requirements. The Flash format is accessible.

However when developing in Flash, as when developing in HTML or PDF, the accessibility of the final product depends on the skill and experience of the developers.

Provided that it is clear in the business specification that the product must comply with appropriate accessibility requirements, and that the business can provide necessary alt text, transcripts, metadata, navigation alternatives, subtitles and details for a HTML equivalent - as would be required to make a DVD accessible - the Flash application will meet accessibility standards.

However if the business stakeholders and developers do not quality check the work - whether Flash, HTML, or PDF - it can fail accessibility requirements.

So in short, don't point a finger at Flash technology for accessibility issues, look to the business owner and developers.

In summary
There are still many negative myths around about Adobe's Flash technology - I'm not sure why.

However they are largely mistaken. 

Flash is an extremely useful and versatile technology, with extremely high penetration and a very small footprint.

It is also fully accessible - provided your developers know how to use it effectively.

So if your agency is considering developing a multimedia application, a video (for online use) or another interactive tool, Flash is a format you should not discount quickly.

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Are IT departments and web professionals their own worse enemies?

Forbes magazine has asked whether IT departments are their own worst enemies, in an article, The un-marketing of IT, citing examples such as,

• Promoting e-mail use but limiting inbox storage and file attachment sizes.
  
• Touting the Internet as a data goldmine, then blocking people from visiting so-called non-business sites.
  
• Providing people with a PC as a tool to make their job easier, then locking it down to stop them adding programs or even choosing their own wallpaper.
  
• Warning people of the dire consequences of not using an application properly, threatening them with legal action every time they use the application or start their PC.
  

I've seen IT teams engage in this type of behaviour time and time again over my career and the usual outcome is to reduce the business's trust and respect for IT practitioners - not because these actions are necessarily wrong, but simply because they are not explained well to business users.

As the article suggests, if IT teams committed to explaining clearly to users why these types of actions were necessary and provided alternate ways to meet business needs it would be easier to build bridges in other areas.

Extending this to web design and development, I've experienced many websites where unusual navigation or rigid processes are used to move users through a web service to their desired outcome.

These situations meet business requirements and allow the user to achieve their outcome, but are often painful and offputting journeys, which do not lead to repeat usage or goodwill.

Often the user feels like they have survived an obstacle course rather than had a pleasant walk in the sun.

When developing websites (or applications) it is as important to consider the journey - the user experience - as it is to consider the destination.

Simply adding contextual support, removing unnecessary steps and modelling navigation on well-understood models can do wonders to smooth the user's journey and vastly improve the user experience.

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Stop focusing on the fold

Research since 1997 has indicated that the 'fold' in webpages (the bottom of the first visible screen of a webpage) is no longer a hard barrier for people.

However the myth of the fold still persists in many web designs.

Boxes and arrows has hosted an excellent article by Milissa Tarquini, Blasting the Myth of the Fold.

In the article Milissa provides a clear call to web designers to move beyond the fold-based design of the past and recognise that, provided the site's purpose is clear in the first visible screen, placing important content below the fold does not make it unfindable for web users.

She compares the clickthrough rates of items of a number of AOL pages, finding that in many cases links below the fold receive as many, and sometimes more, clicks than items at the top of the page that are supposedly more visible.

One of the interesting findings reported is that due to different browser resolutions and rendering engines, there is little consistency in where the fold occurs in web pages anyway. The most common fold line is experienced by only 10% of web users as variations in PC screens and browsers means that the fold appears differently to different site visitors.

Milissa's advice is to instead provide visual cues and compelling content to encourage users to scroll through your page, thereby no longer forcing designers to cram in all the important content into the first screen that appears.

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Can government collaborate in online service development?

I have participated in the beta testing of software for over 20 years now - it's a great way to get an early look at new developments and to have a level of influence over the development process as a customer (in one case I was even hired as the lead designer on a subsequent product).

Lately I've been participating in a number of private betas for online applications. One of these has just gone into public beta (SlideRocket - an online presentation solution designed to compete with PowerPoint). In this case the developer has made their full issues and fix list available publicly and there is quite an active community helping them improve the application, such as through their User Voice section.

This has made me think about how government develops online services for public use - what prevents us from considering collaborative development in this way?
There are obvious upsides and downsides to a public beta approach for any organisation.

On the minus side, it exposes the service early, meaning that government doesn't have as much time to determine the message for the release and providing detractors with an early opportunity to attack.

It also puts a lower quality solution 'out there', providing opportunities for the public to draw a negative view of the service due to its less than fully developed state. This can make it harder to draw people back when it is more fully developed.

Thirdly, putting a public beta out provides malicious elements more opportunity to find security holes and cause damage.

On the upside, a public beta provides for a much more rigorous level of scrutiny by the public and experts before the service is finally release. This allows issues to be identified and addressed and improves the usability, functionality and stability of the service. It also comes at a lower price tag than running 5,000 focus groups around the country (and internationally).

It also allows several bites at the cherry for government announcements. Firstly comes an announcement on the public beta, positioned as an opportunity for the broader community to test, reflect and comment on the service. Then comes the release announcement, where the government can launch the service - more confident it will hit the mark.

On balance I believe the downsides can be mitigated through careful communications management, whereas the upsides provide enormous efficiency benefits around the consultation area.

It does require a change in project management approach - unforeseen bugs and feature issues will be raised through the public beta process and need to be managed adequately.

I'd also suggest that there would need to be less focus on date/cost and more on adequate service quality to meet customer needs.

I believe this is a broader focus change needed in IT development anyway. I am quite concerned by large projects defined around delivery dates rather than meeting the appropriate level of solution performance for customers.

I wonder which of my upcoming projects is appropriate for consideration in a public beta... I can think of several immediate options.

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Gershon recommends procurement integration

The first public comments from the government on the Gershon Report are beginning to emerge, with The Australian reporting on Thursday, Tanner targets agency wastage in bid to save $1bn.

The article basically focuses on duplication of effort and costs by departments who separately procure IT equipment, software, services and office rent.

My feeling is that another Gershon finding will be that there are insufficient links between departments to support more uniform procurement practices, which reflects the historical situation where most government agencies have been operated as discrete businesses, with separate and unique processes, standards and IT systems.

I am also hoping that internal systems will become a focus for efficiency improvements. While improving government's customer-facing IT systems directly improves visible delivery of services, improving internal services provides for indirect service benefits. 

This extends from;

• allowing public servants to spend more time being customer-focused through spending less time grappling with inconsistent and/or low usability internal systems, 
• through reductions in frustration and workplace stress (which impact service quality),
• through easier hiring and transferring of staff who need to adapt to fewer systems in job changes, and 
• better information flows within and between agencies to cut delays.

I am hopeful that we'll see some reform following the Gershon Report towards making government more efficient and more effective at service delivery. Supporting both cost savings and service quality improvements at the same time.

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Tools for user experience design - card sorting

In the last few years I've witnessed the rise and rise of design and particularly usability/user experience design as a professional area.

In the mid-90s, when I was conducting wireframe-based user testing, observing user behaviour in applications and asking users which functionality was most important to them before building websites, there was low awareness in Australia of the value of usability and correspondingly few people working specifically in the area.

Today, alongside the increase in the number of usability consultants we've seen the arrival of online tools that assist web teams in conducting their own testing. 

I'm going to do a series of posts on different topics in the area over the next few weeks.

For now, here's information on card sorting that your web team might find useful.

Card sorting

What is it

Card sorting is an approach that assists web professionals and information architects understand how their audiences group concepts, topics or items - people's 'mental model' of information.

This helps them build a structures that assist their audiences in finding what they are looking for when navigating information, websites and applications. 

It also identifies complex areas needing more work. This includes where there are significant differences in understanding terms or in the relationship between items.

It is one of the easiest and cheapest design processes to use, can provide or validate key insights early in projects (before design work takes place) and can be quite fun for participants.

How is it used

Traditionally card sorts are conducted using cards (or sticky notes) in a physical space. 

Tools and resources

Card sorting is well documented online.

• The card sorting topic at the Society for Technical Communication's website is one of the best central resources for card sorting information
• Card sorting: a definitive guide is also a fantastic resource from Donna Maurer and Todd Warfel.
• The Eurostar Card sorting Case Study (also by Donna Maurer) is a fantastic example of a card sorting process

There are now ways to conduct card sorting online, through tools such as:

• Websort - www.websort.net
  
• Optimalsort - www.optimalsort.com
  

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Getting the basics right - US presidential hopefuls fail website navigation

Forrester Research has released a report critiquing the navigation of the websites of John McCain and Barack Obama, claiming that both fail basic navigation tests by potential voters.


Nextgov reported in the article, Web sites of both presidential candidates fail to connect with users, that,

Forrester used five criteria in its evaluation: clear labels and menus; legible text; easy-to-read format; priority of content on the homepage; and accessible privacy and security policies. McCain's site passed two of those benchmarks: clear and unique category names and legible text. Obama's site succeeded in one area: straightforward layout making it easy to scan content on the homepage.

Neither site gave priority to the most important information on the homepage, or posted clear privacy and security policies, Forrester concluded.

This came on the back of another report by Catalyst, which tested seven criteria. The Nextgov article quotes that,

Catalyst asked individuals to perform seven tasks while evaluating each campaign site, including donating money, reading the candidates' biographies and finding their positions on specific policy issues. Obama's site stood out for its design and navigation, but users were confused about certain labels on the homepage, such as "Learn," which contained links to information about the Illinois senator's background and policy positions.

What were the lessons for all government sites?

• A modern professional look is critical for drawing in users and making them want to use the site.
• Effective prioritisation of information (most important at top) and clear, simple navigation are important for the success of a website, but if the look isn't right users won't stay long enough to use it.
• Focus on the most important information and reduce the clutter, direct users to the most useful information, activities and tools for them.

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Google Chrome web browser beta now available for download

The Google Chrome beta is now available at www.google.com/chrome.

I'm taking a look, and will provide impressions, as I did for Internet Explorer 8, later today.

Other information is available from ZDNet, who liveblogged the Google press conference, and from the Google Chrome media kit, which includes screenshots and videos.

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First pic of Google Chrome

CNET has published what looks to be the first picture of the Google Chrome browser in an article, Google Chrome update: First screenshot, and live-blog alert.

The release looks to be scheduled for 11am US Pacific time.

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Ready for the Google Chrome web browser?

Google is releasing the beta of its first web browser on Tuesday 2 September - US time, and if the media information Google has released is accurate, the product could reshape the face of web browsing over the next few years.

Google Chrome is the company's first foray into the web browsing market - but represents a step to the left and a jump to the right of previous web browsing technologies.

The fully open source browser implements a range of new features to speed up browsing, reduce the impact of malware and prevent browser crashes - it's more of an operating platform for web applications than a window for viewing web pages.

Google's media release (shaped in the form of a comic) explains the features extremely well for a lay person, and has me quite excited as to the possibilities the browser opens for web developers.

The beta, set to be released on Tuesday - US time - appears to me and to others to be aimed squarely at Microsoft, taking the wind out of their build-up to Internet Explorer 8, which went into public beta last week.

Strategically, in my view, this is a great move for Google.

What does this mean for government web managers
More options requiring support
The first thing it means is that there are likely to be three major browsers to support over the next few years, Internet Explorer (in various versions), Firefox and Google Chrome - with some minor players including Safari and Opera.

Later note: Google Chrome is using the same (open source) rendering engine as Apple's Safari, which should simplify part of the process of supporting the browser.

Need to quickly review and align code to preserve user experience
Given Google's search dominance I expect a fast initial take-up rate, with up to 15 percent of website users trialing the product in the next few months (I'll reflect back on this in two months to see how accurate I was).

This means that website managers need to take a look at the rendering engine used by Google (WebKit) and ensure that their sites are compliant. Otherwise they may see falling traffic or increased help desk calls as users struggle to use forms and other functionality.

More ability to move functionality online
The new browser opens a number of new possibilities for website managers, with multi-threaded javascript allowing more complex and faster web applications. This opens the playing field for better web-based tools, allowing more functionality to move online.

It also, in part, ensures that Google's own stable, including Google Docs, Gmail, Blogger, Youtube and Gears, will run faster and more efficiently (sound familiar? Microsoft has a similar ecosystem with Windows and Microsoft applications).

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Use the right online metrics for the job

One of my mantras in professional life is 'you can't manage what you don't measure'.

Therefore it always worries me when I encounter organisations or individuals with a less than firm grasp on how to measure the success or failure of their online properties.

Depending on the type of web property, different metrics are most important for regular tracking and I believe it's the responsibility of top managers to understand the online metrics they use - just as they need to understand business ratios or balance sheets.

After more than twelve years of trial and error, below are the metrics I most and least prefer to use to track different types of online media.

What are the best metrics to use?
Standard websites
Visits
This tracks the total number of visits by users to a website over a period of time (month, week, day). This can include the same unique visitor returning to the site multiple times - which is the same way calls are commonly tracked for call centres.

Visits gives you an overall view of website traffic and, when divided by Unique visitors, provides a measure of 'stickiness' - how often people return to your site.

Note that for an unauthenticated site, a visitor is essentially an IP address, a computer. As multiple people can use a single PC, or a single person can use multiple PCs and it also may track search spiders and other bots, visits doesn't provide a perfect measure of human traffic but it's sufficiently good for trend analysis over time.

In addition, caching by ISPs or organisations can also influence visits - reports based on AOL from a few years ago indicate that visits reports may under report website traffic by as much as 30 percent due to caching - though this is less important today.

In comparison 'readership' is a much looser metric, but is often held in high regard in the print trade.

Unique visitors
Unique visitors tracks the individual IP addresses used to visit a website and as such provides a rough count of the number of actual users of a site, no matter how many times they visit.

This equates to 'reach' for a site - with growth in unique visitors indicating more people are coming to a website.

This is affected by the same IP versus human issue as visits, however is again still far more accurate than 'readership' figures provided by the press or 'viewer' figures provided by TV and radio - which are based on a sample rather than a population (as unique visitors is).

Pageviews
Pageviews are a more specific measure of the views of specific pages within a website, and is most useful for tactical website tracking, allowing the identification of high and low traffic pages and the impact of different navigational or promotional approaches.

Looking at pageviews also provides a psychological view of your audience's top interests - allowing you to quickly prioritise content to be expanded and which can be downplayed.

Pageviews is becoming less important as technology cocktails such as AJAX are more widely used to load part of a page's content automatically or in response to user actions. In these cases a single pageview may not track what the user views in the page.


Authenticated website (transactional services)
Active users
Active users tracks the actual use by authenticated users (real humans) in a time period.

This is the best measure of an authenticated site's success as it tells you how well you've encouraged ongoing use of a website, rather than simply how good a job you've done at getting people to sign up.

Many authenticated sites prefer to talk about Registered users as this is a much larger number, however if a user has registered but never returns, your organisation gains no value from it.

A low ratio of active users to registered users can indicate site problems, and should prompt website managers to ask the question why don't people come back?

Transaction funnels
Transaction funnels track the completion of transactions step-by-step in a service - and isn't necessarily only for authenticated sites.

This provides a website manager with tactical insights into any issues in a transactional process (or workflow), allowing them to diagnose which steps have the greatest abandonment rate and redevelop the process to improve completion.

Generally improving transaction funnels results in more transactions and more active users, which means greater utilisation of the service.


Multimedia (video/audio/flash)
Views
For any type of rich media, the number of views of the media is critical in determining success. However it has to be weighted against the Duration of views to determine if users spent long enough viewing in order to take away the message, or just viewed the first few seconds.

Duration of views
The duration of media views is a more granular measure of the effectiveness of the presentation - tracking whether the media actually communicated its message to users.

Looking at the average duration viewed, compared to the actual duration of the media (where such exists) provides a very strong effectiveness measure.

Shares
One of the keys with the success of media content is how much it is shared with others online - the word of mouth factor. For media with a 'refer to a friend' tool, tracking the use of this will provide a strong indication of how positively users view the material, and therefore how viral it will become. Media that is rarely shared is probably not getting the message across in a memorable way, whereas highly shared material is correspondingly highly memorable - at least for a short time.

Documents (pdf/rtf/docs)
Views
Often 'downloads' is used to track documents. Personally I prefer views as there are some technical issues with tracking downloads of files such as PDFs. In effect the two measures should be identically, but as PDFs, and sometimes other documents, download by segment, they can significantly overreport downloads (which becomes almost as useless as 'hits'), whereas views is a more accurate measure.

There are ways to fix this within reporting systems - which I've largely done in my Agency's system - however this is not possible in all systems.

Social media
Activity by user
Like authenticated sites, the goal of social media is to encourage participation - whether it be forum posts/replies, wiki edits or social network updates/messages.
Each of these represents activity - which may need to be tweaked by the type of social media.

The more activity by users, the more engaged they are with the site and the greater the prospects of longevity.

Views
The other useful measure is views, measuring the passive involvement of users with a social media site. Not all users will actively post, however if they return regularly to view, they are still engaged to some extent with the site.

Commonly the breakdown between active and passive participants is divided as 1/9/90 (Very active/active sometimes/passive observer), however in practice this varies by medium and community.

While that 90 percent doesn't add to the content of the site, they are vital for the other ten percent to participate.


Search
Top searches
Search is also an important area of sites, with the top searches providing another insight into what people want from your site - or what is not easily findable in other navigation.

Tracking this over time provides another perspective on the psychology of your website users. It helps you understand their terminology for navigational purposes and can help prioritise the content you should modify or add to in the site.

Zero results
Any search terms which result in zero results in your site should be looked into as a high priority.

Generally this reflects areas where your website lacks content or uses the wrong context or different language to the audience.


What are the wrong metrics?

Hits
Probably the least useful metric of all time, Hits is still the best known measurement for websites, despite having no practical business uses.

Hits measures the number of files called from a web server, with each separate file accounting for a single 'hit' (on the server).

On the surface this doesn't sound so bad - however webpages consist of multiple files, with the base page, style sheets, graphics and any database calls or text includes each accounting for a separate hit.

A webpage might consist of a single file, or it might consist of 20 or more - meaning that there is no clear relationships between hits and actual page views or user visits to a website.

To increase the number of hits to a website it simply requires the website owner to place more file calls in the page - potentially calling extremely small (1 pixel square) images, therefore hits can be easily manipulated with no effect on the actual number of website users.

So while hits figures are frequently impressive, even for small websites they can easily reach millions each month, they don't provide any useful business information whatsoever.

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Lessons to be learnt from the Grocery choice website

The last few days have seen a number of media reports criticising the new Federal government Grocery choice website.

Amidst the noise there are several key takeaways for public sector website managers.

Note that I'm not involved with the Grocery choice website or program. I'm commenting from the perspective of a public sector web manager who needs to meet the same level of scrutiny for the sites I manage.


What is Grocery choice?
The purpose of the grocery choice website, in its own words, is to provide practical grocery price information to help consumers find the cheapest overall supermarket chain in their area. It does this by publishing prices for typical grocery baskets across supermarket retailers in different areas of Australia, updated monthly.

The website was launched on 5 August this year, at the same time as the ACCC Grocery Inquiry report was released.


The main criticisms of Grocery choice
Putting aside politics, criticism has fallen into several areas;

• Accessibility - whether Grocery choice is usable by vision-impaired people, as reported in the Brisbane Times, Grocery price watch website under fire,
  
• Usefulness - whether the information is sufficiently timely to be useful for consumers, as reported in the Daily Telegragh, PM's Grocery web of deceit,
  
• Channel choice - whether the online channel can reach the appropriate audience, as in the ABC's report, GroceryChoice criticism: Seniors 'don't use' internet.

What should government website managers take away from this?

• Accessibility is crucial - failure to meet the government minimum standards can place your organisation at risk.
  
  
• Usefulness is a function of both information and presentation - web managers need to consider how to best present and explain information and services within the capabilities of the online channel to convey maximum meaning and understanding.
  
  
• Select channels based on desired outcomes - web managers need to be able to convey an understanding of the online channel's capabilities and advise other managers when it is the most important channel, a supporting channel or should not be used.

Unpacking the takeaways

Accessibility
Accessibility is a legal requirement for government agencies. Compromising website accessibility, whether due to tight deadlines or changes in design or requirements, can expose a government agency to legal action and should be considered as a risk in any web project.

On that basis accessibility is a very important area for government website managers to understand and manage. Government agencies are required to follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.o) developed by the W3C in 1999 in meeting the Disability Discrimination Act 1992.

This is detailed in AGIMO's Web Publishing Guide within the Accessibility section.

The minimum standard for a government website is an 'A' rating, with 'AA' rating recommended (personally we're gradually shifting our agency websites to 'AAA' level). There are some great tools available to analyse sites to ensure they meet the standard, such as the VisionAustralia web accessibility toolbar and, as I've discussed previously, a list of tools from AIM.

Web managers should also note that the W3C's update to their guidelines, WCAG 2.0, is nearly here. There are already a useful reference on how to meet the WCAG 2.0 guidelines available from WIPA.

The criticism of Grocery choice is clearcut - if the site doesn't meet the 'A' minimum level then it does fail to meet Australian government standards and this needs to be addressed as a priority.

If it remains unaddressed then legal action is possible, similar to the accessibility court case around the Sydney Olympics website, well described and documented by Tom Worthington.


Usefulness
Does the website serve a useful purpose? Does it provide relevant, timely and usable information and/or services for citizens and customers.

This is something all web managers should be considering when building or developing websites.

In meeting the goals of a government agency web managers need to consider the needs of multiple groups of stakeholders and audiences. We also need to consider the capabilities of the channel itself - online is not the best channel for every engagement.

In Grocery choice's case the debate has centred on whether the information in the site - which is published monthly - is useful to citizens.

This is a debate with two sides, Choice magazine, as quoted in the Livenews article, Grocery Watch is a great tool: Choice, has expressed that they believe the website is of use, whereas other commentators has said that monthly basket data is not as useful as visiting the local supermarkets.

The information is collected as part of a set program, over which I would expect the website manager has little control.

However I think the site manager has done an excellent job of presenting this information in a useful way, and explaining the collection process such that website visitors can make their own determinations of the usefulness of the data.

The presentation and organisation of information is often the area over which website managers have the greatest influence in helping make a website more useful for citizens.

The value of information or services can be greatly enhanced - or greatly diminished - through presentation and all website managers need to have a firm grasp of how to best use the online channel to maximise this value, even when they have no control over the information itself.


Channel choice
The specific debate in ABC's article (mentioned earlier) is related to claims that seniors cannot benefit from the Grocery choice information as they make limited use of the online channel.

Online has always been a controversial channel as not everyone chooses or is able to use the internet. For example it has higher barriers to entry than other mass media - you need to purchase a computer and pay for an ongoing ISP account. Television, radio and print media have a lower upfront investment and shallower learning curve.

Despite this, internet has been adopted in Australia much faster than radio, television or print media. Industry reports are fairly clear that both television and print readership are declining. The advertising industry are also very clear that 18-35 year olds are very difficult to reach via other media, as has been discussed in ABC's The Gruen Transfer.

So therefore online is an important and growing channel - but is not a universal channel.

My experience has been that ]in management there are internet 'bulls' and internet 'bears'. The first group seeks to use the internet wherever possible, is more supportive of the channel and more inclined to fund online initiatives. The second group is still cautious of the internet, is more dismissive of whether it is used and how it is used and is inclined to use traditional channels.

Effective website managers need to steer a middle course, advocating use of the channel where appropriate, and advocating the use of other channels where not. They also need to ensure that other managers understand the capabilities of the online channel so that good channel choice decisions can be made.

The primary goals of organisations generally involve reaching, communicating and engaging with customers and stakeholders - providing what is needful and supporting the conversations necessary to make improvements over time in an effective and cost-efficient manner.

On this basis the channels selected are less important than the outcomes achieved.

I personally remain mindful of this, and believe other web managers should also.


Did you have other take-aways?
I'd appreciate comments from other web managers regarding the takeaways they've had regarding the Grocery choice media coverage.

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How well does government secure customer information online?

Privacy Awareness week is coming up later this month (as is the Security in Government conference), but as I mentioned to a colleague on Thursday, every week needs to be privacy week at a government agency.

Privacy is a sticky problems for all organisations. No security system is perfect and, to-date, as technology has advanced the threats to guard against have increased.

At some point every organisations needs to make a trade off between the services they offer customers, the channels through which they are offered, the convenience of using secure services and the cost of raising security versus the risk of security breaches versus customer complaints regarding service levels.

The size and nature of government makes effective security imperative. The Government ID leaks report, prepared by Consumerreports.org, highlighted that more than 1 in 5 US privacy breaches are traceable back to the public sector. This reflects the size of government and amount of data it must collect, store and share, as much as it reflects security levels.

The report also commented that,

When a brokerage firm or retailer has a data leak, consumers can take their business elsewhere, as almost one-third of breach victims do, according to a recent study by the Ponemon Institute, a research group in Traverse City, Mich. But as customers of the government, consumers don’t have a choice about giving personal data to federal, state, and local officials.

In other words, people must provide information to government, but there is no financial incentive for government to maximise security. The impetus for security in the public sector has to come from political will backed up by appropriate legislation.


So how well does government do in securing customer information?
In the US the 2007 Computer Security report card (PDF) prepared for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in May this year, gave the US government a 'C' for computer security, up from a 'C-' the previous year.

While some departments stood out with 'A' scores, such as the Justice Department, a number scored 'F's, such as the Department of Treasury and the Department of Veteran's Affairs.

In Australia there is no such security ready reckoner. However the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) frequently conducts security audits on various departments and agencies.

These are tabled in parliament and made available to be publicly scrutinised, so the media and public have access to quite detailed information on government security.

Based on these reports, Australia's government is doing reasonably well. As in the private sector there is no such thing as perfect security, and opportunities for improvement do exist, however there is a cultural and strategic focus on security and agencies do the best they can with the resources available to them.

Personally, considering the level and severity of incidents reported in Australia compared to the UK and US, for example, Australian government seems to have a good track record, albeit not a perfect one.


What can government do better?
Staff
This stems from a conversation I had on Thursday over lunch, where the discussion turned to the different types of security that can be put in pace.

Australian government seems to do quite well in guarding against external risks and protecting our networks and computer servers from attacks.

The weak point in many security systems are the employees. They need access to information about customers to do their jobs, but exposing the data can raise the risk of it being publicly exposed. This can occur in many ways, confidential data being copied only USB sticks or emailed home to be worked on, the well-known lost laptop/DVD situation, where a laptop or DVD containing customer records are accidentally left somewhere or stolen.

While there are strong guidelines to help reduce and address these issues, another approach is to investigate data-level security which prevents given data from being accessed except by authorised users.

Data protection can be accomplished through mechanisms - which reduces the human risk. It is also now quite developed for certain types of data, for example the 256bit security embedded in Adobe documents.

Customers
A second area government can focus on is customer education. There's less value in centrally securing information if customers do not guard their usernames and passwords.

This can be partially managed through systems enforcing more secure passwords and using different techniques to educate customers on how they should protect their own computers against key loggers and other hackers. Another part involves being more transparent to customers on how secure a system is and how diligence on the customer's part improves the system's security.

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Is a busy website really that bad?

A theme I often hear in Australian web design circles is "make the website less crowded".

It's accepted wisdom that a website should have plenty of white space, clearly separated parts - and as little text as possible - particularly on the homepage.

Similar to Google's 28 word limit, Australian communicators seem to consider the best homepage design as the one with the least on it.

Certainly in the user testing I've done over the years with Australians I've heard the terms 'too busy' and 'too crowded' come up frequently.

Those are, however, perceptual measures. What about actual usage?

I have never specifically tested for the 'busyness limit' (the theoretical limit when text, link or graphical density begins to negatively impact on user task completion) - nor am I aware of any testing that has ever been done on this basis.

I am aware, however, of cultural differences in website design and use.

Look at the difference between US or Australian and Chinese or Japanese websites for example. In China and Japan, as well other Asian countries, the density of graphics, links and text is up to five times as high as in the US or Australia.

These high-density website countries also have high populations for their geographic size - which may form part of the difference in approach. Perhaps the amount of personal space people expect is related to the amount of whitespace they want to see in a website - although some high density European nations do not exhibit quite the same trend.

With the changing demographics in Australia it's important to keep an eye on what our citizens are looking for - our communicators and graphic designers may not always represent thecultural spread of the public.

So is anyone aware of research undertaken to look at the differences in expected information and graphical density of websites across different countries or cultural groups?

It could be an interesting (and useful) thesis project for someone.

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Why do some local councils in the UK have better websites than some Commonwealth agencies in Australia?

The question in my title is of course a little provocative - who is to say whether a website is better or worse?

The answer, in my view, is our users.

For some reason in Australian we have never, to my knowledge, asked our citizens to compare government websites against universal categories such as awareness, ease of task completion, information depth and quality, findability, usability or design aesthetics.

There are few objective standards or comparison processes in use in government - although Global Reviews has a good stab at rating local council sites. Having worked with them before, their methodology is robust and well developed.

Users aside, I do feel safe in saying that the UK is far ahead of Australia in the field of egovernment. While some Australian Commonwealth agencies are still struggling to introduce Web content management systems some UK local councils are now adding advanced Web 2.0 features as below (and it's not the only example, just currently the best one).


Redbridge-i
Redbridge Borough's website is a leading example of user customisable government websites in the UK and is recognised as a world leader.

As a London Borough with roughly 250,000 constituents, Redbridge's site was developed on the basis that the public own the local administration and should have the ability to comment on services and engage on an ongoing basis with the council.

It drew from best practice private sector websites, incorporating features from sites such as Amazon, Google, eBay and Facebook.

Part of the design philosophy was to allow the public to decide what was most important to them. Therefore, except for a fixed space in the upper right, the website's homepage can be reorganised as desired by individual citizens, with sections able to be dragged and dropped to other locations on the page and content hidden or show.

The site can also be customised by postcode to show the services most relevant to individual households.

Another decision was to continuously innovate, develop and release new features and let citizens decide how valuable they are. This taps into actual citizen behaviour, rather than anticipated behaviour and provides a uage-based measure of what the website's users will use than do focus groups and wishlists.

One particularly successful feature of the site are the forums supporting community consultation. Councillors are active at responding and use the forums to identify comment trends and useful stakeholders to inform council decision-making processes.

The site also has a growing transactional function and has demonstrated cost saving by transferring business from phone and face-to-face channels.

The site was developed in-house over a nine month period by a team of up to 6 people, with up to 500 staff consulted about the development, and released in 2007.

The best way to learn to learn the site is to play with it. It really is easy to use and effective at task completion.

More information about the site is available from the Innovation in local government services awards page.

A very good 5 minute video about the Redbridge-i website is available at Localgov.tv.

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Do government communications discriminate against - or for - the visually impaired?

I was reading a very interesting blog post the other day regarding the experiences of someone who is colourblind, Confessions of a colourblind man.

It raised a number of accessibility issues with printed material, moving images and websites that the author had experienced during their life.

Despite the requirement for government in Australia to ensure our websites are accessible, I worry both that we do not do enough, and that we do too much, in this area.

I also worry that we do not pay enough attention to our other communications channels - particularly print and television, which do not seem to have the same degree of scrutiny or governance.

Of course cost is a factor, but where should we draw the line between cost and equity?

We have explicit laws to prevent discrimination on the grounds of gender, age or physical impairments. The cost of equality is generally not an acceptable argument in these situations.

But do we still discriminate against people with visual and movement impairment in our communications based on cost?

Or do we go too far (which I have also seen done) - develop our websites and communications for the lowest common denominator (again because of cost), and therefore lose touch with the average Australian?

Many government websites (including my agency's) are designed in 800x600 monitor resolution despite this being used by under 10% of the audience and there being well-established technologies available to reshape a website to make it relevant at different resolutions.

For my agency this decision is definitely about cost. The cost of the content management system and accompanying work required to allow us to support multiple website standards.

My preferred option would be to have;

• one website version for those with impairments (dial-up users/low resolution monitors/screen readers)
  
• one website version for those without (broadband users/high resolution monitors)
  

It's a hard tightrope to walk - how does your department do it?

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Participate in the World Usability Challenge - 1 August 2008

This is a very worthwhile event with a simple theme.

As described on its website, what you need to do on 1 August 2008 is:

1. Find a usability problem - it could be a poorly designed toaster, a confusing or redundant letter from your bank, or even a problem with your experience boarding, flying and disembarking an aeroplane.
   
2. Design a solution - solve the usability problem, and write your solution down, sketch it up or (if you're feeling particularly keen) make a quick prototype of the improved product/service.
   
3. Share it with a person who can solve the problem by implementing your solution - write to the toaster designer, call your bank manager, or talk to a stewardess. Hand him/her your idea. Encourage them to implement it. Be persuasive! and don't forget to post what you've done on the Google Group or the Facebook group.

Will you be participating in the World Usability Challenge?

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Why should government care - how many people use Firefox/Safari/Opera anyway?

I've noticed a tendency in Australia for government agencies to focus on having their websites work perfectly in Microsoft Internet Explorer, but not always quite so well in Firefox, Safari, Opera or other web browsers.

This isn't limited to the public sector, private sector organisations face the same issue of cross-browser compatibility.

On one hand there is the Australian Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and a suite of other standards which relate to web accessibility, as well as state accessibility laws, that organisations - particularly government departments - are required to comply with.

On the other hand there are resource and testing limitations which constraint what organisations can do.

It is clearly important for organisations to support as many web browsers as possible, as the fewer the browsers supported, the longer the tail of people who will not get a satisfactory experience on a website.

There's also the possibility of legal risk. There's already been a high profile court case in Australia on accessibility, regarding the Sydney Olympics (for a great analysis of it by Joe Clark see Reader’s guide to Sydney Olympics accessibility complaint)

Applying web standards is te obvious approach, but not always the simple solution. The standards are quite complex and open to interpretation. Even when your web professionals believe you've met the W3C standards there can be variations in how your site will display in different 'standards-based' browsers.

Specifying which browsers you support is another approach. Simply choose the most used browsers and support those, with custom style sheets to address any page rendering differences. This will catch a good 95% of the market in the top four or so web browsers, but leave a tail of users with older web browsers or less well known products who may not receive the same experience.

So what is the best solution to ensure your organisation meets accessibility standards, delivers the intended experience and doesn't bankrupt itself in the process?

Unfortunately I don't have the knife to cut through for this Gordian knot, every organisation needs to weigh the considerations and decide its own best path.

I can provide a few further references to feed this decision.

Links to various accessibility legislation and guidelines are listed above. Most states in Australia also have government web standards they apply which can provide some guidance on the topic.

As for browser market share, below is a chart detailing the latest share figures from a major statistics collector.

Alongside outright browser shares, it is critical to consider web browser versions as well. While Internet Explorer has a 74% share (down from over 95% before Firefox was introduced), of this roughly 47% use IE7 and 27% use IE6 or earlier. Similar splits also occur for Firefox and other browsers.

Another good source for browser usage is your own web logs, which can provide a more audience specific view of who accesses your website. My agency uses Webtrends to analyse this data, but the majority of web log analysis tools will provide similar information.

Web browser shares - Q2 2008
Source: Wikipedia - Usage share of web browsers

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Slides from Web Directions Government now available online

I heard some good reports from people who attended Web Directions Government back in May.

For those of you, like me, who missed it, Web Directions South has made a number of the presentations and podcasts available online via their blog, Web Directions Government resources now online.

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