It’s party time at the Department of Finance as GovCMS continues its growth surge, from 78 sites less than a month ago to 102 sites this week. This means the Drupal-based platform is tracking 70% ahead of its 2016 targets, demonstrating how successful a well-engineered and supported digital platform can be in government if well…
I regularly hear stories from people in government agencies and councils about how their organisation isn’t meeting mandated security and accessibility requirements for their websites and broader online presence. Often this is because there’s insufficient time, money or a lack of understanding of the mandated requirements by either the business owners or the vendor doing…
Today Australia’s new Privacy law comes into force, affecting Australian Government agencies, businesses with a turnover of more than $3 million or trading in personal information and all private health service providers. As the first major change in Australian privacy law in 25 years, there’s been numerous changes and updates to reflect the major changes in…
National Australia Bank (nab.com.au) Banks do it, utilities do it, even media does it, is it time for government to also do it – drop the ‘www’ from web site promotions in advertising and links? This came to my attention while playing with the Australian Department of Health and Ageing’s new my child’s eHealth record…
It’s not unusual for agencies to spend millions of dollars on a new program supporting some group in society and hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants and research to ensure that the new program is designed to be successful, to track its progress and audit it over time. It’s not unusual for agencies to…
I’m pleased to say that with all the apps now being developed by Australian governments, the Department of Human Services’ new ‘Express Plus Students’ App, has managed to address almost all the criticisms I’ve had previously regarding government mobile apps. What were these criticisms? And which did the Department fail to address? Read on… Have…
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…
In a recent story in ITNews, Accessibility checker surfaces errors, John Hibbert claimed that a new Mental Health website, www.mindhealthconnect.org.au, operated by the National Health Call Centre Network and funded by the Department of Health and Ageing, didn’t meet the Australian Government’s minimum web standards. Based on a review using the ACheck tool for the minimum…
For all the attention on government policies, the various announcements and documentation on political party sites, it can be very difficult to compare and contrast where different parties sit on different issues and, for governments, difficult to keep track of whether they are sticking to their election policies or amending them for pragmatic, political or…
There was surprising news from StatCounter earlier this month when Chrome topped Internet Explorer as the most popular web browser for the week of 14-20 May. Sourced from CNET: Chrome now world’s top browser, but beware the math While this is only one of the services reporting browser use, represents only one week and is…
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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