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A quick addition to my post on real-time government, here's more background on how online technologies are being used to enable real-time government.
Watch Congressman's Culberson video stream for an explanation of an approach he's using to reach his constituents as a 'real-time representative'.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Follow-up on real-time government - video stream available online | Tweet |
Why should government care - how many people use Firefox/Safari/Opera anyway? | Tweet |
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
Real-time government - not as far away as you think | Tweet |
I was able to take part in an inpromptu live online video and text discussion this morning between Congressman John Culberson of Texas and initially with the Managing Editor of the Wall Street Journal, and then with Grover Norquist, the President of Americans against Tax Reform (pictured below) at a fund raising event in the US.
While I'm not their constituency (although I am a Director of an oil company with production interests in Petrolia), there were a number of others watching who were, and it was a fascinating look at the democratic process in evolution.
The online discussion was an opportunity for Congressman Culberson to directly reach and represent his constituency, asking and answering questions put to him.
The entire discussion was managed through the use of free online social media technologies, Twitter was used to inform the Congressman's constituents that the discussion was taking place and then Quix was used to capture the video on a mobile phone and stream it live to the internet , presenting it on a page where people could text chat directly with the participants, receiving verbal replies.
As one of the first in I was privileged to be mentioned by name - making it the first time I think I've been mentioned by an elected US Congressman.
That type of closeness - between individuals and their elected officials - is now becoming available, and we'll see how soon these technologies are in use in Australia's community Cabinet meetings and similar events.
Below is a screenshot I took of the event (see me at right logged in as CraigThomler).
The Congressman will also be conducting several further interviews through the evening using the same tools and the permanent record will be up at Quix.
Review: Funnel Back''s new search feature - Flusters | Tweet |
To provide a little background, Funnel Back is a search technology developed and commercialised by CSIRO.
It has been deployed in Australia.gov.au as their Whole-of-Government search technology as my agency's website search tool (as a hosted solution) and in many other agencies and companies across Australia and other countries.
It's a reasonably good search engine if some time is spent configuring it and I've been happy with the search success levels we achieve (though always trying to improve them).
AGIMO recently invited my agency to participate in the live pilot test of Funnel Back's new search feature - Fluster (50kb PDF).
In brief Fluster helps users find what they are looking for by offering alternative phrases to refine their search terms.
An example of this in action is visible in Australia.gov.au - simply use the search and look at the Related Search area at the right of the page.
We've been trialing this feature within our site for a little over a month now and I have an initial view on how Fluster has been performing.
How Fluster is doing
Initially I was concerned about the relevancy of the topics and phrases that Fluster would choose to display. This hasn't proven to be an issue, Fluster is providing highly relevant results.
However I'm not convinced that people are using the tool effectively. We've seen no measureable change in the search success rate and I do not have evidence that visitors to our site are using the Fluster Related Search area when searching.
This could be an education issue. We currently present Fluster in the search results page without any form of help, meaning that our visitors are not guided to the tool.
It could also reflect that improvements are necessary in the reporting of Fluster use so we can determine if the tool is assisting people find what they need. These reports are still being refined by Funnel Back.
Another factor I keep in mind is the trend towards more sophisticated internet users.
A large proportion of people are very familiar with Google and other 'generic' search engines and have learnt to use phrases rather than individual words to increase the relevance of results.
In fact, the average length of a search term in Google exceeded four words at the end of 2007 - at least according to WebProNews which reports that People Are Finding More Words To Search With.
This means that people are already refining their own search terms, potentially reducing the value in having a search engine do it for them.
In conclusion
So my preliminary conclusion is that Fluster can add value to search results.
However more time will be required to really understand the impact it is having and test ways to help people use it effectively.
While internet users are becoming more sophisticated, this doesn't negate the value of Fluster. There are always new people coming into the user pool and even experienced users may on occasion find that Fluster suggests a topic or phrase that they had not considered but leads them to a relevant result.
Top level internet domains for dollars | Tweet |
If you have a spare US$50-100,000 you may be able to buy your own top-level internet domain from ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).
ICANN moderates top level domains around the world. These domains, such as .com, .net, .com.au and .gov.au, are the basic naming structure of the internet and control what organisations and nations can do online.
Previously there were very tight controls over the naming structure and an extensive review process before new top level domains were created - of which very few were.
However the new regulations effectively allow any organisation - private or public - to register top level domains, subject to a much simpler review process and a payment.
I do not expect to see much impact on government in Australia - the .gov.au domain is well established and strongly mandated. However it now becomes much easier for states or councils to consider different naming - such as .nswgovernment or .sutherlandshire
In the private sector it's hard to say - previous releases of top level names have not seen significant attrition from the .com (or .com.au in Australia) names, but the alternatives haven't been that much better.
However with any top level domain name now possible, there is the possibility for greater fragmentation.
Time will tell.
More information on this decision is available at ItNews, ICANN proposes greater top-level domain name flexibility.
There's also a good opinion piece over at VentureBeat, ICANN threatens to change the rules of the domain name game
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