[LINK] ABR website is browser-phobic

[Tom Koltai]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Alex 
> (Maxious) Sadleir
> Sent: Tuesday, 10 May 2011 10:29 AM
> To: Link list
> Subject: Re: [LINK] ABR website is browser-phobic
> 
> 
> On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 10:14 AM, Ash Nallawalla 
> <ash at melbpc.org.au> wrote: [...]
> >
> > What would be a good process to get government websites to 
> allow us to 
> > use modern, standards-compliant browsers by a certain deadline?
> 
> The one we already have: Web Accessibility National 
> Transition Strategy (NTS) 
> http://webguide.gov.au/accessibility-> usability/accessibility/
> 
> 
> "The full scope of the upgrade 
> required (including issues of
> retrospectivity) is discussed in the NTS. Briefly:
> 
> WCAG 2.0 conformance is required on all websites owned and/or 
> operated by government under any domain. This includes 
> external (public-facing or private) and internal (closed 
> community) sites. That is, conformance is required for all 
> internet, intranet and extranet sites. All websites and web 
> content created after July 2010 must meet at least WCAG 2.0 
> Single A by 31 December 2012. Websites and web content 
> created before July 2010 that will be archived or 
> decommissioned before December 2012 are not required to meet 
> WCAG 2.0. Any web content created before July 2010 that is no 
> longer current, but that is still important and/or popular 
> and not yet appropriate for archival, should remain WCAG 1.0 
> conformant. Where this type of content is not WCAG 1.0 
> conformant, agencies should upgrade to WCAG 2.0." 

In other words,in typical Government speak, there are at least fifty
ways to not be forced to comply with the WCAG 2.0 transition.

I don't understand why Government keep having to qualify everything to
enable loopholes to exist.

I understand the concept of not stepping on toes, but we all know the
maxim about eggs and omlettes.

What ever happened to plain old:

All Government Web sites will be useable by all Browsers listed in the
top three for both conventional computers and mobile browsers.
(Total six browser 100% compliance) 

Encouraged by a little compliance carrot and stick;
Any Department that doesn't have their websites operational according to
this mandate by 31 Dec 2011 will undergo a change of the top three staff
members (selected by pay grade). (The Carrot of course is that they keep
their jobs.)

That should work.

Although I note that the aph.gov.au search engine still requires a
compsci degree with an SQL internship to be able to be used.
What we really need for the average citizen to be able to interface with
Government is a simple public plain language AI interface;

I want all the data needed for registering an australian business...

Include forms y/n?      Yes
Include How to's y/n/?  No
Include Table of Fees y/n? Yes

Thank-you for visiting Whole of Government on the Web. :-) Have a nice
Day :-)

Imagine how much wee could save on support call centres if citizens
could have their queries interactively answered correctly 100% of the
time.

How many calls have persons in this forum made to Government Departments
when the datasets don't work or are broken or don't comply or the web
pages don't have a clear pathway to the answer being searched for?

Me personally, at least 300 hours on the phone in the last thirty years
on regulatory/administration issues.

That's one member of Government spending 300 hours on the phone with me.
Multiply that by 350,000 entrepreneurs doing the same thing. [1]
Suddenly it's understandable why Government costs so much.
It's all the idiots that don't have IE6 Browsers loaded that are tying
up the clerks valuable time.

[1] That equals 3.5 million hours or 1944 clerks working full time (1800
hrs p.a.) answering dumbcluck questions).
@ 45K p.a. per clerk, that equals  $87,500,000 or a reasonable budget to
get the web pages right. 

Assumptions:
------------

Hours on Phone to Gov Clerk over 30 years	300	
No of AU Entrepreneurs	350,000	
Total Hours Phone Support over 30 years 105,000,000 
Working hours in a week	37.5	
Working weeks in a year	48	
Working hours in a Year	1800	
Number of clerks needed	58,333 
Per year (divide by 30)	1,944 
Clerical Wage $45000	
Ergo Cost to Government of Clerical Phone Support to Public
$87,500,000.00 (P.A)
Over the next thirty years (assuming 6%)
10 years	 $1,310,018,730 	
20 years	 $3,499,363,584 	
30 years	 $7,420,146,771

Sort of makes you understand why Tom Worthington is so hot under the
collar for Government presentation standardisation...

7 billion ?
A pittance really. Let's not worry about it, it's an election soon, time
for the next lot to ignore what we really need.

Tom