Is the Australian Government really slow to update staff to modern web browsers?

One of the concerns I faced when working in government, and that I know many other people faced as well, was the currency of the web browser(s) available for use by staff.

Some agencies still used Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, a ten year old browser that isn't supported by many major websites and online services and that even Microsoft admits is insecure and out-of-date. It is now used by only 0.8% of Australian web users.

Statcounter research - Web browsers used in April 2012
|in Australia and Oceania

Others prohibit access to Firefox or Chrome - which, according to some reports, together now hold a larger share of web browsing by Australians than Internet Explorer, and are also considered by many to be more standards compliant.

In fact Chrome v21 (at 21.1%) is reportedly the most used web browser by version in Australia, followed by Internet Explorer 9 (19.6%) and Firefox 11 (16%).

Why is the selection of browser so important?

There's a few reasons that spring to my mind.

Because the browser selected can limit the ability of staff at agencies to use the internet productively. To source information, monitor conversations online, use modern web services and even access advanced intranet features.

Because it costs more to develop for older, standards non-compliant web browsers - with Internet Explorer 6 compliance often adding 20% to the cost and development time of web sites and intranets.

Because it constrains testing of websites. While some web teams have special dispensation to access every browser for test purposes, in other agencies staff are forced to rely on their personal devices, or simply can't test for modern browsers.

Because there is an imperative on government to not use software more than two versions old - a particular issue for agencies still using Internet Explorer 6 when the current version is 9.


I can understand agencies who are 'trapped in the past'. There's often more important priorities for IT and management - critical systems that need to be managed, budget and resourcing concerns. However if you could improve the productivity and happiness of all your staff with a simple software upgrade which also improves your security, well...

There's also sometimes technical issues. While web browsers are free, upgrading an entire department isn't. There are dependencies - particularly with SAP, which stubbornly only supported Internet Explorer 6 until recent versions. It costs money to upgrade SAP and to manage this and a browser upgrade across thousands of computers, including any communication and training support required. Agencies, with other priorities, may put off this work as long as they can.

All this aside - how are Australian Government agencies actually doing in terms of how modern their web browsers are. Are the majority still stuck on Internet Explorer 6 or a similar old and insecure web browser?

As part of my FOI request on social media in March, I asked agencies which web browsers they used, as it impacts on which social media tools they can use.

The exact question was:

Which web browsers are currently mandated and/or supported for use by your agency's staff when using agency supplied IT equipment as specified below?
(Please tick applicable web browsers or supply by email a copy of the documentation on your Standard Operating Environment detailing this information)

While some agencies may regard this as confidential, please note the web browser type and version can, in most cases, be detected by any website visited by your staff.

Aside from two agencies who told me that this was "commercial-in-confidence" information they would not release, most agencies were very willing to provide this information.

I've aggregated the results in the chart below based on the 65 legitimate survey responses I received (the easiest information to analyse). Other (non-survey) responses haven't been included due to the analyse time required.

Web browsers officially mandated by Australian Government agencies
for use by their staff - sample from 65 agencies.

Looking at this response, many agencies supported multiple web browsers - generally Internet Explorer and one other.

Few remained on Internet Explorer 6 or 7, and most sat one version behind the most recent released web browsers - such as on Internet Explorer 8.

I did make one error. I forgot to include Blackberry's browser as an option for mobile phones. This is used as standard across all Blackberry mobile devices, so can be considered a standard.

So overall, how did Australia Government agencies do?

Very well in my view - and better than I had anticipated.

While a few agencies (including some very large ones) still lag back on Internet Explorer 6 or 7, most are using acceptably modern web browsers, even providing a choice in many cases - which helps compensate for some of the minor niggles in some browser versions.

Note
You can now view (and analyse) survey responses from my social media FOI as well at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=mE_2bvebDvXLOHHKrCnKP79IaCNkFpWjDocQJAN5aEvCQ_3d)

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Apps and hacks for social good (info-philanthropy)

It is nice to begin to see volunteering in more than simply physical ways beginning to be valued and rewarded in Australia.

Apps Aid (image from the Pro Bono Australia article,
'App Aid - Developers Unite with Charities For Greater Good')

I've just learnt about App Aid, a 48 hour event being held in Australia in September this year, from Pro Bono Australia).

Ten teams of seven (4 app developers and 3 charity representatives) will compete to create apps that make a positive difference to the community. $30,000 in charitable funds is up for grabs as prizes.

The event is being organised and sponsored by the Vodafone Foundation, the charitable wing of Vodafone Australia (who have quite a bit of experience with social media).

Like the Random Hacks of Kindness held last year in Melbourne as part of a global series of events, App Aid represents a new style of involvement in social issues.

Unfortunately, this type of 'giving back' isn't well recognised or supported in Australia as yet.

While the US has a number of foundations committed to 'information philanthropy' and 'hacking for good', Australia has a big legislative gap in this space.

I've looked in detail into setting up charitable foundations for information philanthropy and it's very hard to do here (Kudos to Open Australia who did indeed set up a foundation for their activities).

In fact the only recommendation by the Gov 2.0 Taskforce that was not taken up by the then Australian Government was about Info-Philanthropy. It was deferred, and subsequently has been ignored by other government reviews.

The lack of interest in this area has even been portrayed in the media as opposition to this type of philanthropy (Federal Government opposes info-philanthrophy) - though I suspect it would be more accurate to say that info-philanthropy hasn't reached a sufficient awareness threshold for governments to consider acting.

In the absence of support by government, I hope we do see more info-philanthropy from the private sector in Australia.

We don't just need to feed the hungry and house the homeless but to use technology to do these things and support other charitable and philanthropic activities in an increasingly efficient and effective manner.

Technology, coupled with information, has transformed how industries and governments operate. Ignoring the potential impact on the philanthropic and charitable sector is not only unwise, it is potentially extremely costly.

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In Perth this September? Come to RightClick!

If you're based in WA, or in Perth on 5th September this year, consider attending the Western Australia Institute of Public Administration's fourth annual RightClick conference, focusing on "Technology but not for its own sake".

I'll be providing a keynote on 'shiny new things' and why people are attracted to them and there's a great line-up of other speakers on topics including:

• Service in the age of the digital citizen
• Information Systems Audit Report
• Database design for longevity
• Harnessing technology to enhance the citizen experience
• Big Data: harnessing big data to acheive unpredented insights for service
  improvement and policy development

More detail is available at the IPAA's WA website at www.wa.ipaa.org.au/events/2012/rightclick_2012.aspx

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Do agencies unfairly assume that households have working printers?

While chatting with government folk in Victoria yesterday, the topic of printable PDFs in websites came up. Many agencies have them - large documents designed to be read on paper, rather than screen, and designed accordingly.

It made me ask the question: How many households actually have working printers and are able (and willing) to print large documents or forms?

The folks in the meeting couldn't answer, although one admitted that he didn't actually have a printer at home (despite working in an online capacity for the government).

This has now begun to intrigue me. is there an assumption in government agencies that every household that owns a computer must own a working printer as well?

Is there any evidence to justify this?

I've done a bit of looking today for statistics that might answer this question.

What have I found? Nothing that really answered it.

We have plenty of statistics from the ABS, Finance and other agencies and corporate entities on the number of households with computers and with internet access.

However none provides information on the number of printers in a household, whether they work or whether (given the cost of ink and supplies) people are prepared to print out those large documents with beautiful glossy full-colour images.

The most recent information I could find was from an e-waste brochure from Manly council, quoting the ABS as saying that in 2011, between households and businesses, Australians had around 5 million printers.

Given there's over 1 million businesses and around 9 million households in Australia, that means that as many as 5 million households, over 50%, may not have printers and be unable to print out those lovely documents on government sites.

How realistic is that figure? When I consider my wife and I as a sample of two, it actually appears plausible (and I understand how statistically unreliable that is).  While we are both professionals and knowledge workers, using computers and the internet as our primary tools - neither of us need to print often.

In fact my wife hadn't had a printer for years before we married, she either did things online or printed individual forms at work on the unusual occasion where this was required (and it was usually a form for work anyway).

I have a working printer now as I need it for work purposes. However until February this year I had also lived for several years quite happily without a working printer.

I had, however had a non-working printer. Why non-working? Because supplies were expensive and scarse. Printer manufacturers changed their cartridges when they changed their printers - making older printers harder to buy for. Why did I keep it? Because I might need a printer (although I never did until the supplies for it became impossible to buy).

So should agencies provide big documents on their sites under the belief that people will print them out at home?

Should they expect people to fill in forms online, and then print and sign them?

Perhaps - perhaps not. However it would be nice to see agencies making this decision based on evidence, rather than based on the assumption that every household with a computer has a working printer.

UPDATE:
Trevor Clarke has just let me know that his employer, IDC, tracks the movement of printers into Australia every month and quarter and reports on the number of households with printers. He tells me via Twitter that:

"IDC research shows 76% have 1 printer, 18% have 2. Only 7% don't use. Survey of 2000 Australian households in 2012"

So there's is some evidence that most Aussie households have printers. Good to know!

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Sharing policies, patterns, recipes & code across government

This morning at the Drupal Downunder event I learnt about the New Zealand Features site which shares recipes for re-usable Drupal code and patterns across NZ government.

To me this is representative of one of the significant opportunities I've seen for government in Australia emerging out of Gov 2.0 thinking and tools is the ability to share between agencies.

Sharing, as a concept, has allowed humans to move from the savannahs of Africa to our current position as the dominant species on earth. We taught each other how to create tools, how to farm, how to build and how to aspire.

While competition is often seen as the key driver of progress, under every competition is sharing - shared concepts, shared goals and, often, shared resources and knowledge. So even in the midst of the most ferocious competitions sharing is going on behind the scenes.

For organisations, sharing is also essential for survival and success. Organisations that configure themselves or act to successfully limit sharing will, by default, be slower to learn lessons, adapt to changing environments, cost more to operate and deliver less in the way of outcomes.

Unfortunately, through siloisation, this sits at the basis of the organisational structures that became popular following the success of the US railway corporations in the 19th Century.

This hierarchical approach for organising unskilled labour to deliver enormous achievements was very effective for managing large numbers of semi-skilled and semi-literate workers performing simple repetitive tasks, such as building a railway or operating a basis production line. Higher level managers, with greater education levels, provided the brains, innovation and held the broader view of the goals.

This hierarchical structure has become less and less valuable as an approach as populations have become highly educated and moved from performing repetitive physical activity to complex and multi-faceted knowledge work. 'Shifts' and 'gangs' became 'teams' and 'branches', where individuals were expected to perform a diverse range of tasks well - and to swap in for a colleague where necessary with limited time to train.

As modern organisations remain a hybrid of 19th century railway hierarchies and self-managed teams and networks, they have struggled to balance the needs of activity segmentation - leading to siloing - with the needs to share knowledge.

As the internet has done for many other activities it has taken sharing and put it on steroids. Suddenly you can source knowledge and expertise from anywhere in the world, sharing experiences, skills, lessons and outcomes.

This should likewise have a profound effect on government agencies, who seek to draw on the experiences of other jurisdictions and the knowledge of experts to inform their policy recommendations.

Also important is the ability to share within government between agencies. While a percentage of every agency's activities differ from those of other agencies, another percentage - frequently the larger number - involve repeating similar activities - HR, procurement, IT management, finance - as well as patterns of activities such as policy development processes, website development processes, internal communications processes.

This is all well and good - and clearly as the internet exists by default people can and will share.

The problem, of course, is that often public officers (like other people) need more motivation to share than the joy of giving. They need time and support, a framework in which to share and guidance on how to do it.

The US government has set about solving some of these underlying needs for a framework in which to share through the GovForge and MilForge initiatives. These sites support the sharing of code between agencies by providing a framework and mechanism whereby code can be provided, categorised, make available and the owners of the code reimbursed - through recognition.

I learnt this morning about the New Zealand site, where public officials have taken steps in the same direction, with the Features site sharing recipes for re-usable Drupal code and patterns.

In Australia we're a little further behind. While sharing definitely goes on, with some agencies, such as DEEWR, happy to share their web code and patterns with other agencies. I'm aware of code and pattern sharing for tenders, for research and for other activities where agencies go through the same processes, though often for different ends.

However we've not yet seen a central site within government for sharing these things. A place where agencies can store their staff policies, communications plan templates, business planning processes, emergency management frameworks, tender documents, research surveys, website code and patterns and more, so others across government can learn from, build on, modify and/or repurpose them - then submit their improvements back into the system.

Effectively this would provide a best practice repository that goes far beyond 'case studies' to support government agencies in standing on the shoulders of each other, improving their capability to serve government and improving policy and service deliver outcomes

Gov 2.0 makes this possible, and I hope that, with the example of the New Zealand Features site, these things are not too far away.

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