User interface design (or UX design) has been a buzz term for several years in government, with agencies spending significant money on ensuring their services and processes are easy for the broadest range of citizens to access and complete. This is a good thing too – It makes good economic, reputational and even health sense…
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…
The Victorian government has launched a blog asking users for their ideas on how to improve the vic.gov.au website as it goes through a redevelopment. The /blog states that the aim of the redevelopment is to provide: an appealing new branding and identity for the www.vic.gov.au website a new and usable look and feel a…
I went to the Australian Business Register site (www.abr.gov.au) this afternoon to set up an ABN (Australian Business Number) for a company. This is a very common step, taken by hundreds, if not thousands, of Australians every week. However I immediately hit a speed bump. The site’s online ABN registration process threw up an error…
Often in government there’s only two social media networks discussed and considered for community engagement and communications, Facebook and Twitter. MySpace is a distant memory, LinkedIn is used just for resumes and services like FourSquare, Plurk, Ning and others are not well-known. Also not that well known is Google Plus, and perhaps rightly so –…
I’ve been watching, and participating, in some of the discussions around whether government agencies and entire governments should centralise or decentralise their web presence. For some reason a number, such as the UK government, South Australia and the ACT, have decided that centralising all their websites into a single portal is the right approach, although…
Thanks to links from John Sheridan (@sherro58) and Kerry Webb (@kwebb), I’ve been reading some of the latest articles and blog posts talking about Twitter. They attempt to analyse and ‘place’ Twitter on the spectrum of human communication – discussing whether the service is more like text or like speech. They also discuss the potential…
Google has announced that it will progressively end support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 during 2010 – beginning with Google Docs and Sites in March. Youtube, another Google company, is also phasing out support. Announced in the Google Enterprise blog post last week, Modern browsers for modern applications, Google Apps Senior Product Manager, Rajen Sheth,…
I’ve been rereading the ABC article about the two girls who got caught in a drain and used their mobile phone to update their Facebook status, rather than call Triple 0. A representative of the Metropolitan Fire Service (MFS) in Adelaide said that, If they were able to access Facebook from their mobile phones, they…
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…
This archive mirrors the original eGov AU blog — Craig’s professional commentary on AI, digital government and technology in public life, running since 2006.
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