Building a business case to move from IE6 to a modern web browser

Here's some notes useful for a business case justifying an upgrade from Internet Explorer 6 to a more modern web browser that I prepared last week for a colleague at another organisation.

It supports the priority in Australia 2 to Upgrade all government web browsers.

Please add to them in the comments if you see points I've missed.

Goal
Encourage a government Department to upgrade from Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) to an industry supported web browser.

Background
The IE6 web browser was originally released by Microsoft in 2001.

Over the last eight years it has been updated twice, Internet Explorer 7 was released in October 2006 and Internet Explorer 8 in March 2009 (with developer previews available since March 2008).

Since 2001 the entire web browser market has changed. Netscape ceased developing Navigator (in December 2007) and new browsers entered the market including Apple's Safari in November 2003 (version 4 released June 2009), Mozilla Firefox in November 2004 (version 3.5 released June 2009) and Google Chrome in December 2008.

These entrants, and the long-standing Opera web browser, have significantly driven innovation in the market.

IE6 support
The IE6 browser, being two versions behind, is no longer supported by Microsoft and is in rapid decline in community usage.

Major websites and organisations are progressively ceasing support for IE6, meaning that increasing numbers of websites are not accessible using the browser. For example, Google, the top accessed website in Australian and across the world, has advised that it will no longer be supporting IE6 for its applications.

A campaign to encourage people to shift away from IE6 has been operating online for several years with significant success and has support from Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Balmer, who stated that,

Microsoft recommends end users that are browsing the web with Internet Explorer 6 to upgrade today to benefit from numerous improvements including security features and usability enhancements.

Interoperability is key to enabling developers to continue to create great user experiences on the web. Our commitment to the technical community continues with our significant investment in Internet Explorer 8.

We continue to believe in the importance of supporting the end users and encourage the technical community to work with us in securing a good transition for the users that today are using IE6.

Web standards
IE6 does not adhere to web standards as defined by the WSG and as reflected within the Acid2 test.

As stated in Wikipedia's page about Acid2,

Acid2 tests aspects of HTML markup, CSS 2.1 styling, PNG images, and data URIs. The Acid2 test page will be displayed correctly in any application that follows the World Wide Web Consortium and Internet Engineering Task Force specifications for these technologies. These specifications are known as web standards because they describe how technologies used on the web are expected to function.

Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3 and Safari 2+ all successfully pass the Acid2 test. IE6 and IE7 fail to pass the Acid2 test (as did earlier versions of other web browsers).

This test will eventually be supplanted by the Acid3 test, which is currently only passed by Safari 4, Opera 10 beta and Chrome 3.0.17.

It is not yet necessary for organisations to use Acid3 compliant web browsers as not all the test conditions within Acid3 have been passed by the W3C at this time.

Browser market shares
IE6 is currently in rapid decline, with the primary users being organisations who have not yet upgraded to more modern web browsers. Home users have predominantly upgraded to more modern web browsers.

It is estimated that Internet Explorer has between 52 and 74% web browser market share in July 2009 depending on the specific measurement site (source: Usage share of web browsers). Firefox has between 18 and 31%, Safari 2.6 - 4.1%, Chrome up to 3.1% and Opera up to 3.3%.

Internet Explorer 6 is estimated at having 15 - 25% market share globally. However in Australia this share is reportedly much lower, at around 9% (StatCounter)

Benefits of an upgrade

• Moves the organisation to a supported web browser,
• greater compatibility with web standards,
• future-proofs the organisation's web browsing for several years (as major sites cease IE6 support),
• aligns staff with citizens' use of the internet - statistics for Australian web use show that the Australian public predominantly use modern browsers,
• provides a greater level of security whilst browsing,
• supports tabbed browsing (opening multiple pages in one master window),
• allows use of modern web features within the organisation's intranet,
• there is no product cost for an upgrade from IE6 to a modern web browser.

Risks of upgrading

• Some legacy internal systems may not be fully interoperable with modern web browsers,
• security impacts will need to be investigated to ensure there is no increased risk of systems penetration,
• greater ability to access modern websites may increase internet use for work purposes - thereby increasing network load.

Risks of not upgrading

• Political risk for Minister if questions asked within parliament on reasons for use of old and unsupported technology (as is already occurring in the UK),
• organisation will continue falling further behind current web standards,
• organisation will progressively lose access to key online services as they cease IE6 support,
• greater security risks due to less security in IE6 than more recent web browsers,
• increasing difficulty in upgrading internal systems that require web browsers as modern versions of content management systems and other web-based solutions are less and less likely to support IE6,
• need to invest in optimising (dumbing down) the organisation's websites for IE6 simply to support staff,
• difficulties in meeting web standards if testing cannot be conducted on modern, web standards compliant, web browsers.

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Contribute to the study on public sector innovation

The Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (DIISR) is holding a series of focus groups through August to give Australian federal public servants the opportunity to share their views on innovation in the public sector.

If you're a federal public servant interested in having your say on public sector innovation, you can learn more at DIISR's site on the page, Advancing Public Sector Innovation - Focus Groups.

You can also follow the project on Twitter as @PSInnovate.

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Case study - Twitter's use in emergency management

The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is now regularly using Twitter and other online channels to supplement offline media when providing emergency announcements and information.

This has meant more than simply setting up a Twitter account and sending messages, the agency has invested in training videographers and educating staff on how to use new media effectively to inform the public.

This has been covered in a case study released by FEMA in its website, FEMAinfocus: FEMA Twitter Media Availability with Administrator Paulison.

In this FEMA describes Twitter as,

The social media tool Twitter www.twitter.com (which FEMA uses under the account femainfocus) is a free web-based interface that allows for cell phone messaging to be distributed to large audiences. Thus, the tool works well for FEMA to promote individual preparedness and information avenues.

NextGov has also covered FEMA's use of social media in the article, FEMA takes open approach to social media.

Combined it provides a clear picture of how Twitter and other social media tools can be valuable in emergency situations.

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Blogging's impact on governments in the Arabic speaking world

Often those of us living in English-speaking countries focus on what is going on in other English-speaking nations, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, UK and so on. There's a perfectly good reason for this, many of us don't speak the languages used in other blogs around the world.

However the impact of social media is global, and doesn't only, or mainly, occur in English or in Western countries.

A good example of this is a recent case study looking at Arabic blogs, entitled Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture and Dissent.

Conducted by Harvard University the study,

... identified a base network of approximately 35,000 active blogs, created a network map of the 6,000 most connected blogs, and with a team of Arabic speakers hand coded 4,000 blogs. The goal for the study was to produce a baseline assessment of the networked public sphere in the Arab Middle East, and its relationship to a range of emergent issues, including politics, media, religion, culture, and international affairs.

The study found that the majority of Arabic bloggers were young males, though there was a significant pocket of female bloggers in Egypt. While many blogs were in Arabic, a number were also in English or French - largely based on the influence of former colonial powers.

Most Arabic blogs focused on personal diary-style observations, with personal life and local politics being more of a focus than international affairs, per the quote below,

But when writing about politics, bloggers tend to focus on issues within their own country, and are more often than not critical of domestic political leaders. Foreign political leaders are discussed less often, but also more in negative than positive terms. Domestic news is more popular than international news among general politics and public life topics. The one political issue that clearly concerns bloggers across the Arab world is Palestine, and in particular the situation in Gaza (Israel’s December 2008/January 2009 military action occurred during the study). Other popular topics include religion (more in personal than political terms) and human rights (more common than criticism of western culture and values). Terrorism and the US are not major topics. When discussing terrorism, Arab bloggers are overwhelmingly critical of terrorists. When the US is discussed, it is nearly always critically.

The study also found that terrorism was also generally not a leading topic of conversation and,

... when discussing terrorism, Arab bloggers are overwhelmingly critical of violent extremists. We consider this a positive finding, although qualified because the issue of attitudes toward terrorism hinge on the term’s interpretation across the Arab world. Whatever its presence in other, less ‘public’ online venues, overt support for violent global confrontation with the West appears to be exceedingly rare in blogs. However, it is not unusual to find blogs that criticize terrorists on the one hand, and praise Hamas or Hezbollah for violent ‘resistance’ to Israel on the other.

We've already seen the impact of blogging on countries such as Iran (which is Muslim but not Arabic), which is sometimes considered the third largest nation of bloggers.

I'll leave you with one of the most powerful paragraphs from the report itself, discussing the

...collision of old realities and new technologies taking place in the Arab world, and a surprising number of elements intertwine in them: abuse of power, legitimacy of authority, the power of television, the ubiquity of video cameras, feedback between blogs and the press, traditional vs. modern sensibilities, freedom of expression, the power of online voices, and the scope of political arenas—local, national, pan-Arab, pan-Muslim, global. At stake in this collision are both the symbolic construction and the hard power of ‘The Public’ across the region. Notable is the seamless combination of modes of communication into a single system: face-to-face interaction (including cattle prods), mobile phones, television, newspapers, and multiple genres of Internet sites (blogs, forums, chat rooms, video sharing, photo sharing, etc.). Increasingly, these comprise an emerging networked public sphere, in which the power of elites to control the public agenda and bracket the range of allowable opinions is seriously challenged.

I expect that the Arabic world already has things to teach Australia about online engagement.

The full case study is available online (PDF).

Here's the visual representation of the Arabic blogosphere from the case study.

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WTF is social media - one year on

If you excuse the suggestive language, this slideshow provides an excellent birds-eye view of the extent of the social media landscape.

It is worth comparing with the version released a year ago to see some the growth and changes that have driven social media into mainstream society.

View more documents from Marta Kagan.

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