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Nicole
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Government Department Websites . . . - 1/16/2007 4:59:37
. . . Have any of you ever been asked to quote on a Government Department's website redesign?
I have, as of this afternoon 
I'm looking at it in depth now, it's a department that's broken into regions, and the Public Relations Officer called me this afternoon, we talked a while and I'd really like to get the quote in by the weekend, if not sooner.
The site is currently a table layout and has a zillion PDF and MS word downloads, all without informing the user that they're PDF's and DOC's and obviously not how big they are. It's a large task looking at this site with dial-up.
But as there are guidelines in Australia for government sites regarding web standards and accessibility, I'm wondering how heavy to play that card?
Ultimately I expect that the bottom line will be the cost, but I really have an opportunity here to play the accessibility and web standards card, and I don't want to play it too vigourously or too mildly.
Have any of you any experience with small government departments, if so, how did you play up accessibility and web standards?
p.s. I don't need to mention the political, media and general community attention this site gets do I?
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Tailslide
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RE: Government Department Websites . . . - 1/16/2007 6:18:14
Details here about the Aus rules - http://www.frontpagewebmaster.com/m-281309/tm.htm
All I can say is - firstly, congratulations on being asked to tender.
Secondly - DON'T RUSH THE QUOTE!!! Really look at what's involved. For instance, all those PDFs - are they accessible PDFs (were they created using tagged format?) if not, you want to be very careful about claiming 100% accessibility for the site as it might come back to bite you.
Thirdly - don't undersell yourself - you can guarantee that this will be more work than you think it will be now!
Fourthly - if you get it, make sure you have a single point of contact. You don't want to be listening to conflicting views. Tell them to elect the contact and that you'll be talking to them - not to a committee.
How is the site to be updated - Govt. depts usually want to be able to do that themselves?
Given that it's a Govt. dept I think that you can definitely play the accessibility card - don't smack 'em over the head with it, just state it as a matter of fact - "of course you'll need your site to be fully accessible in line with (quote legislation) won't you?" and watch their blank faces.
Good luck!
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Nicole
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RE: Government Department Websites . . . - 1/16/2007 6:31:11
Thanks for the link Tail, yes. I wrote that! 
I most certainly won't rush the quote, It's a real pain going through their site right now because of only being on dial-up and all the pdf's etc. From what I can see, there's no need to have these pages as pdf's, laziness perhaps, but it's all, or mostly information that should just naturally be on the site.
Being the local area subsidiary of a state government department, not the department itself, I'm not sure how bound they are to asking for several quotes etc, but she did say she found my site through Google even though my partner did promote me to one of their employees a few weeks/months ago.
I won't undersell myself because it really looks big when you look into it. She told me on the phone that it currently has 10 pages including the home page, i guess she forgot to mention that there's at least 100 PDF's and maybe 30 or 40 word docs that are just linked hapharardly to the site for no reason.
I don't like the thought of spending 3 or more days writing a detailed quote including accessibility statements for a 10 page site, but maybe I can convince them?
That's why I asked the SnippetMaster question in the lounge, they want to update it, and so far I've had no success with 2 hosts who don't like including Zend or Ioncube on their server.
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Tailslide
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RE: Government Department Websites . . . - 1/16/2007 7:15:19
Might be 10 pages now - but there'll be more than 10 pages by the time you've finished even if you don't change the PDFs and Word Docs. You'll want a sitemap, an accessibility statement etc etc.
Ideally I'd say the best way to build that site would be to use a database. Have the content of all those PDFs and Word documents in the database maybe with links to the PDFs/DOCS if they want.
To ensure accessibility (assuming that you'll be stressing that) then the PDFs will need to be written as tagged PDFs which might mean doing them all again if they weren't done properly.
This is the sort of job that can be as cheaply done or as expensively done as you like. Snippetmaster will probably do it (I can't say I'm a huge fan of it) and you could at least make the template itself accessible. But Snippetmaster can play up if you're not careful about where you place the tags plus it displays an odd selection of formatting in the WYSIWYG window thing (shows some inherited styles not others) and then there's all those PDFs....
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d a v e
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RE: Government Department Websites . . . - 1/16/2007 9:42:06
nicole do you live anywhere near a library other place/person with broadband??
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Nicole
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RE: Government Department Websites . . . - 1/16/2007 18:22:31
Thanks for the responses everybody.
Dave I don't really live anywhere near anything, and although I'm a bit loathe to keep making "excuses", but I am also caretaking a property where my tenure expires in two weeks, security has been hightened here in the last fortnight and has thus caused me to concentrate way more on that, writing reports, recording everything I see and many, many phone calls to various people in Sydney and also the Police. I've only just been able in the last couple of days to focus once again on a client's website that is now way overdue, and starting Tuesday I'm going to be traveling 4 hours everyday to my new home taking things down there etc, so I really have to spend time on this quote until I have it right, before the beginning of next week anyway.
As an aside, this is exactly what happened when I left Albury, within the last two weeks I started getting web design enquiries and unfortunately I was just too occupied with other things to devote the time needed to make appointments to see them and give them a decent amount of my time. I’ve learnt a lot in the past few months about how easy it’s supposed to be to take a web design business with you no matter where you move to. Three to four months is about how long it seems to take to begin getting enquiries whether you’ve done any promotion or it’s just been through Google. Broadband is an issue even though I thought I could do without it, and any future caretaking jobs I take on, (it is good money and such, but this is why I need to sub-contract to other designers rather than picking up my own clients), and there is another possibility of a caretaking job in July, I’ll be insisting on as much notice as possible so I can ensure that both moves, to and from will be quick and smooth and I can find out about Broadband availability.
I live nowhere near a library and nowhere near any clothes shops to buy anything half decent to go and see clients.
Anyway, that may explain a lot but not necessarily in the context of this thread.
Sally, the use of a print style sheet is exactly what I have in mind, with the contents of those PDF’s converted to html with options to print directly from the page, and with PDF and doc download links also. I’ve done this on another site without any dramas, and I am an Official Adobe “reseller” is that the term they use? I’ll have to look it up, but in other words I have their permission to use their download link on sites I create. I think to any novice this might sound impressive.
Tail, I learnt the “one point of contact” thing a long time ago when an NGO whose site I created started bombarding me from all directions with updates that both weren’t being approved by their boss and were at times in conflict with what another person was asking me to do.
When I write the quote and give any ideas on why things should be done as I suggest, I’ll probably have to use the accessibility card often, I will check how these PDF’s were created though, and at the end of the quote I’ll mention something about the Disability Discrimination Act. I almost threw out a printout of the Government’s “minimum standards document” I printed a few years ago just the other day. Luckily, although outdated it probably gives me a good starting point to find the legislations I’ll need.
I stress that I know I can’t rely on my hunch, but I do feel for several reasons that I’ve been contacted solely because of my partner’s promotion of my business to a guy from this department that he had dealings with a few months ago. I also know that Government Departments must get at least 3 quotes before giving a contract to anybody, but I really felt I was either the first or only person she’d called because she wasn’t very sure at all when asking some of my questions that would be common questions that a web designer would ask.
Nicole
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womble
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RE: Government Department Websites . . . - 1/17/2007 4:41:23
Congrats Nicole.
I'd echo everything everyone else has said. On accessibility, as Tail said, be wary of claiming 100% accessibility, but the accessibility aspect is very important for government/local government. A while back I was invited for coffee with the IT dept's head IT honcho at work after he learnt of my interests in accessibility and standards. To cut a long story short, I discovered that as well as the general requirements for accessibility (the Disability Discrimination Act here in the UK), loving beaurocrasy and red tape as they do, as in many areas of local govt, there are various targets and monitoring that have to be done for central govt, including one on web accessibility. If the Aus govt are anything near as beaurocratic as ours are, I'd imagine they'd have something similar, so if you've any way of finding out if they have any internal targets/monitoring requirements (obviously without jeapodising your position as a tenderer), try and find out if they have any targets and stuff and what their requirements are.
Off-topic slightly, reading the accessibility requirements for Aus, interesting that it says:
quote:
This requirement applies to any individual or organisation developing a Worldwide Web page in Australia, or placing or maintaining a Web page on an Australian server.
...so I guess that means that even if you're not in Australia, even if you're using a host with servers in Aus, you're covered by their DDA? Interesting.
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Nicole
Posts: 2848
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RE: Government Department Websites . . . - 1/17/2007 4:57:35
Yes that is the case as I understand it Womble. It doesn't apply to personal websites from what I understand though. I may be wrong.
Back to the bureaucracy thing though, interesting from some things I've read on their site,, they're well up on all the buzz words that used to frustrate me when working in a Govt. Dept years ago.
I've started writing to them, although only a draft and it won't be sent until the weekend or Monday, but then again I may post it like DPF used to advise. I know how Govt Dept's love reports, so maybe that will be the way to go.
It's funny though, I was going to mention to them that the Govt. Dept I used to work for is in a similar field of interest and really felt that may be to my advantage . . . until I saw their general manager's surname and realised that it was the same surname at least as the boss I told off in his office, refusing to attend any stupid staff training that involved such "ice breaking" techniques as introducing yourself by you shoes. I told him I wanted nothing more to do with that crap and refused point blank to attend any such waste of time meetings.
He asked me "what do you think your future is in this organisation then Nicole?", and I told him "none, I want out". I left with a redundancy package a few months later!
So if the surnames match, it might be his son or something, but I'd better not mention who I used to work for huh?
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moose
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RE: Government Department Websites . . . - 1/17/2007 15:19:54
Nicole,
[I have edited this post, I went into a big speel and then realised there was a heap of posts and most of what I have said had already been said. Pays to pay attention at 7am]
What I will say is contrary to some of what's been said, I think layman's terms is important here, as is showing you understand the department's role in the community, and using that role is a very good way to ensure they comply with the standards, tell them they need to present a readily accessible site to the public, and the harder it is to use, the less likely it is to draw people to their services - they will appreciate the fact you are concerned for the way they are seen publicly - I used to work for 3 different govt departments - I know how important image was to all of them.
< Message edited by moose -- 1/17/2007 15:27:28 >
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jadach
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RE: Government Department Websites . . . - 1/18/2007 12:43:57
Funny you asked. I just quoted for a website job for the town I live in.
Prior to meeting with the Town Supervisor, I created a demo-site of what could be. I like doing that because a visual really helps me land the job.
This is my first project working with EWD. Being that I'm using this new software and it really helps keep the code clean and compliant, I did in fact use that as a selling point.
On each page of my demo site I placed the W3C XHTML 1.0 validation link. I used it during my meeting and explained the importance of this. The Town Supervisor acknowledged the importance of having a compliant website, but I really feel I would have gotten the job regardless.
The site I'm creating, or actually re-doing, is jammed full of pdf's and jpg's. Like you, there is alot of organizing I need to do.
Good luck with yours. Sites like these can open doors. Now with EWD I feel more confident. I just need to get used to asp.net opposed to the old DRW. The DRW was a great and easy way to set up user interfaces that they can use to maintain portions of their site. Once I figure that out in the asp.net world, I'll be fine.
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womble
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RE: Government Department Websites . . . - 5/21/2007 16:26:18
quote:
ORIGINAL: Nicole
It's also disappointing to discover that their interpretation of accessibility is far removed from its real meaning.
Accessibility isn't just about making sites accessible to people with disabilities. TBL's original vision for the internet, and the mission of the W3C is that it would be accessible to all, and that included different technologies, and methods of accessing the web.
From the W3C site:
quote:
The social value of the Web is that it enables human communication, commerce, and opportunities to share knowledge. One of W3C's primary goals is to make these benefits available to all people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability.
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission
From the WAI site:
quote:
a key principle of Web accessibility is designing Web sites and software that are flexible to meet different user needs, preferences, and situations
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