Posts
In the past it has been the practice for many governments around the world to avoid playing in the centre of commercial spaces, where competitively priced services are already provided by private businesses.
Government interventions in these markets are managed through legislation and direct intervention as a last resort (in cases of market failure) - as we are seeing in the current financial crisis in some countries.
The philosophy behind this approach is often that in markets where the private sector is willing to provide goods or services, competing on price, options and customer service, it is less likely that a government can add the same level of value.
Instead government concentrates on the 'margins' - situations where people are unable to afford or access the mainstream private sector services.
This, in essence, is how the public housing and unemployment benefits systems function. In both cases there are private sector options (private rentals/home purchase and jobs), while governments provide safety nets for citizens unable to access these alternatives.
Should government follow a similar approach online?
Looking at the online world, the costs and barriers to providing information and services have declined, broadening the range of services that may be offered by private enterprise.
Reflecting this, should governments follow the same philosophy of avoiding playing in commercial spaces, again only focusing on marginalised citizens?
Or should government provide public alternatives to existing commercial services?
This is a big - and highly political - question, which can be seen by the Commonwealth government's stance on internet filtering. While there are many commercial products available (from retailers, ISPs and online) including both charged and free services, the government is pursuing an approach of providing its own products, licensed from commercial providers, to ensure availability.
Similarly, should government provide 'web infrastructure' tools such as geospatial services, when large commercial organisations are already providing these services?
Geospatial services are a case in point.
We've seen the WA and QLD governments roll out their own public geospatial services specifically for their own state use, with the Commonwealth soon to follow suite at a national level via the AGOSP program.
These services provide similar functionality to both Microsoft and Google maps, and in fact Perth's public transit authority has its timetables available in a Google maps beta (but not in the state's own geospatial service).
Equally, for search, the Commonwealth government licenses the FunnelBack search technology, designed in Australia by the CSIRO, for use in Australia.gov.au and other sites (including the CSA website) rather than implementing Google's free service, as the US government has done.
In both these cases governments have followed a competitive tendering process to select the technology that best met their documented needs. The solutions are also under the control of Australian governments, rather than being owned and operated by foreign owned companies.
However, as demonstrated by Sensis this month, as reported in the SMH's article Sensis concedes defeat to Google, sometimes where the market is going is also important.
Sensis is discontinuing its Yellow Pages search and maps technologies. It will instead rely on Google to provide both services. As Google search was reportedly used by more than 7 million Australians per month, rather than the 184,000 who used Sensis's search engine there's clear commercial reasons why Sensis would want to stop sinking funds into trying to keep up with Google and instead leverage Google's audience.
Is this a valid choice for government?
Rather than custom developing or tendering for services that copy publicly available (and generally free) online services, should government agencies 'piggyback' instead?
This is a hard question to answer. Various Australian government agencies already piggyback on publicly available services - such as MySpace, SecondLife, Youtube and Google Maps.
On average Australian government websites get 25 percent of their traffic from Google search (based on Hitwise's statistics) - far outweighing the level of traffic from the central state or Commonwealth gateways.
On this basis, Australian government is already piggybacking on publicly available commercial services - and highly effectively.
However when introducing its own internet filters, customised geospatial services or search tools, Australian government is choosing to not piggyback - taking on the burden of building usage and investing in the ongoing development of new features to remain current with the commercial market.
I'm not about to venture an opinion on whether or not governments should follow this route, these decisions may be made for reasons of national security, flexibility or specific public needs.
However the options should be carefully considered by the initiators of these projects.
The decision to 'go it alone' needs to take into account the competitive landscape.
What alternative services are available for citizens - which do online audiences already prefer and why?
Why should citizens choose the government alternative and will the government's service deliver the outcomes citizens desire?
Is the government prepared to invest in continuous development? Or will the service fall behind commercial alternatives?
Without a full consideration of these factors, like Sensis's failed mapping and search service, these government offerings may not, in the longer-term, deliver the benefits desired.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Should the government provide online services where competitive commercial sector services exist? | Tweet |
Victoria releases egovernment landscape scan | Tweet |
Last week Victoria released the full text of the Victorian State Government E-Government Landscape Scan, conducted in August this year.
The paper provides a review of the last six years of egovernment experience for the state, some of the challenges being faced in balancing the needs of citizens versus the needs of government and the different maturity levels of different agencies, with some key insights into how the state can improve performance into the future.
It's a great read for anyone involved in the egovernment area from state or federal levels.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Australia training Bangladesh government on eGovernment IT management | Tweet |
It's good to see Australia being an international leader in the egovernment space.
As reported in the Daily Star's Technews, the ANU's National Centre for Information Systems Research (NCISR) completed training 99 Bangladeshi key decision makers and officers in the strategy and management skills necessary to improve the effective use of ICT in public sector organisations.
This ten-day training was part of the eGovernment capacity building project, initiated by the Australian National University (ANU) under the AusAID's Public Sector Linkages Program (PSLP).
It focuses on supporting countries (particularly in the Asia-Pacific region) in building their strategic and operational capacity in the eGovernment area.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Why do concerns about Flash persist? | Tweet |
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.
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,
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.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Google improves Analytics | Tweet |
Google has released into beta a set of major improvements to Google Analytics that will make it an even more robust web metrics tool.
Including advanced data segmentation, data visualisation using 'motion charts', improved adsense integration, a more advanced administration console and an API for enterprise integration, this is the largest upgrade of Google Analytics for some time - however it could be some time before the features become available to all accounts.
I use Google Analytics to track traffic for this blog and as a secondary reporting system for our agency's websites.
In general I've found Analytics reports on around 65-75% of the traffic captured in our agency's web logs, but provides easier and more accurate geographical segmentation of traffic as well as better conversion tracking than can be achieved without extensive customisation of our weblog reports.
I also use Analytics to provide 'backstop' reporting to identify issues with our primary reporting (such as logs being corrupted or not transferred to the reporting system). This is very handy for providing evidence that it is a technical issue, rather than a decline in traffic, responsible for sudden changes in visits reported by a web log system.
If you've never investigated Google Analytics I'd recommend considering it in a secondary role to your main agency web reporting system.
For content external to agency hosted sites, such as MySpace, Facebook, WordPress, Yahoo Groups or Blogger hosted sites, Google Analytics could be considered as an option for a primary reporting system.
