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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What should egovernment focus on?

There's a great article up on BuzzMachine titled Google as the new press room.

It makes the point that newspapers are in the content business, not the printing and distribution or website business.

As such they should focus on what they do well (create excellent content) and outsource the non-core activities.

The specific example is to have Google, or someone like AP, provide the technology platform and allow newspapers to focus on providing content.

This philosophy applies for government as well.

In the public sector we seem to invest a great deal of money into creating new websites in order to deliver content to different stakeholder groups - I'm guilty of this approach as well.

However what does government really do well, and what do we do badly?

Firstly I'd go out on a limb and say that we do websites really badly. Most Australian government websites function differently, using different content management platforms, different technology platforms and different workflows.

The quality, structure and depth of content varies widely, as does design and the use of different enabling technologies such as Flash, AJAX and Livecycle, blogs, wikis, forums and RSS.

Realistically, across government, we could have a single web content management platform, with appropriate enabling technologies usable by any agency - including a consistent search tool and reporting system (imagine being able to see how all government websites were performing side by side!)

A central design team could provide web quality assurance - enabling agencies control over their distinctive look, but preserving a common high level of usability and accessibility.

A centralised editorial team could provide oversight for information quality and depth, allowing departments to focus on being content matter experts.

A central transactions and forms/workflows team could oversee the development of agency forms - ensuring they use consistent terminology, provide contextual support and make it as easy as possible for citizens to interact with the government.

This would allow government departments to focus on what they do best - provide specific customer services, be content matter and policy experts.

Sounds like a pipe dream?

I'm seeing the fringes of this starting now. The central DHS Letters and Forms Secretariat, AGOSP with it's single sign-on, Smartforms and geolocational services, AGIMO's existing GovDex wiki and Funnel Back search solutions.

These are all pieces in the overall puzzle.

The challenge moving forward is to overcome departmental silos, satisfy the interest groups and provide a robust centralised framework with sufficient funding and support to bring it all together.

It's a vision with enormous benefits for citizens and for governments. It just requires people in government to share the big vision and drive it forward.

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The value of web 2.0 to government

I've been reading about a presentation given by Michael Specht at PubCamp Sydney, an event that brought together old and new media people to look at opportunities and threats facing the industry.

He gave a an impromptu presentation on Enterprise 2.0, which contained a number of insights that apply equally to the public sector.

The full presentation and Michael's slide notes are at Enterprise 2.0, employees and profits.

Below is a summary of some of the key takeaways for me, with quotes from Michael's slide notes.

• The active engagement of employees in an organisation delivers enormous financial benefits
  A 2007/2008 Watson & Wyatt research report looked at employee engagement on a global basis and showed a strong linkage between engagement and financial performance. In summary organisations in the top 25% of engagement had a 20% total return to shareholders, a 22% market premium and $276K productivity per employee when compared to the bottom 25%.

• Most Australian workers are not fully engaged - this results in productivity losses
  A Gallup poll in 2005 of 1,500 employees found that 20% are actively disengaged (disruptive, unproductive or disloyal), with another 62% not committed to their role or employer. Gallup estimated this was costing the Australian economy A$30 billion annually. This research is backed up by recent studies in the US that found only 27% of workers were actively engaged.

• Communication and customer focus are key drivers for staff engagement
  A finding of the 2007/2008 Watson & Wyatt research report mentioned above was that communication and customer focus were two of the four key drivers for engagement. The others were compensation/benefits and strategic leadership.
  

My conclusion from these is that as social media is a key way to expand communication and customer engagement it's an important influencer of organisational effectiveness.

For government agencies this means that staff have a better understanding of customer needs and views and are able to collaborate effectively either within the agency or across all of government.

The combination of these two outcomes - understanding and collaboration - improves policy development, execution and service delivery.

Reduced costs, improved outcomes - that's the value I see in Web 2.0 for government.

What do you think?

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Does wireless internet access improve government productivity?

The Federal Mobility 2.0 Study, released a couple of days ago in the US, has reported that wireless internet access for Federal public servants improves their productivity.

In fact over 70% of respondents, who all used wireless internet, reported that it improved their productivity.

At the same time only 40% of Federal agencies reported that they allowed wireless internet access.

I'm currently blogging on my personal laptop using wireless and would agree with the productivity benefits.

I primarily use my laptop for work reasons, from conferences, at home and around town. I use it for taking meeting notes, developing wireframes, writing strategy papers, referencing net sites and monitoring activity on our website - amongst other things.

Internet access is a critical requirement for all of these tasks and I can generally access a wireless network wherever I go.

Except for one place - my office.

My agency has no wireless network in place for staff, although there are a couple of test networks in use by the IT team I can see when my laptop is at work.

This presents an interesting issue for me and for others. When at the office I am often in meetings in rooms with no computer, electronic whiteboard or any way to access resources on our internal network or on the web.

This leads to the need to print out any documents needed and bring them to the meeting. I don't know how many people attend how many meetings each day at my agency, but all that paper, printer ink and elecricity adds up quickly.

It would both be a major cost for the agency as well as a major timewaster - printing the documents in the first place, finding the references within the documents, then taking hand notes in the meeting and retyping them into a computer afterwards.

I'd like to see an inhouse wireless network we could use to save all this money and environmental cost.

Would that be secure you ask?
The same report indicated that 83% of IT Executives said that wireless networks can be secure.

Do you have wireless internet access in your agency?

And do you believe it improves productivity?

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Probably the first official Australian Commonwealth and State government Blog: blog.training.gov.au

Nathanael Boehm has provided more details on what may be the first official joint Commonwealth/State/Territory government blog in Australia.

In Government Blog: blog.training.gov.au, he talks about the purpose behind the site and how it was constructed, using opensource technologies to deliver a fast, cheap and secure solution.

This achievement is a great example of how a great deal of value can be delivered within government without the need to invest in high-cost and complicated infrastructure.

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