Dumpling in a Hanky

Last week was a very trying week for me, website wise. One of those weeks when you just want to scream, because you can't believe people would do such frustrating things. I monitor a lot of web sources for news that's relevant to my employers business, and to do that, I rely heavily on RSS feeds. They allow me to see the output of sites quickly, and mean that I don't have to visit those sites repeatedly each day to be able to track their content. So, RSS feeds are VERY important to me. And in the context of Government sites, they're important for the general public too, helping to enable them to see what's happening in various departments, e.g. if consultations have been published that they might want to respond to, or if new regulations have been issued that may affect their business. Meanwhile...the Government has stated that it's consolidating websites into the www.gov.uk address, and 24 departments will be moving to that address over the next 18 months. ...

Today, I've spent a lot of time banging my head against the brick wall of bad or mad search design. First up was the Scottish Government, with its contribution to "thwarting any attempt at a search", by somehow managing to date various items as being released on October, November and December...of this year. So looking for recent items was impressively pointless. As was the fact that the search was also giving over 300k results. Looking forward to that Forced Marriage report in December. Then, I went into the Scottish Parliament website, to try doing a search in the Official Report.  Top tip: don't do this. Ever. Use Google to search the Parliament's website instead. Mainly because, if you can get the report to return hits, then you get to wade through the results, blindly. And blindly it is, because the search doesn't give you any idea of how many pages of results you've got, or any shortcut to get to specific points/leapfrog to a further point...

This press release was posted by the Land Registry yesterday, and it's left me a bit confused. What are these Public Data Organisations (PDOs) the Government is creating? I had never heard mention of these before. The Met Office, Ordnance Survey, and Land Register are moving into this PDO? Why? The Land Registry was part of the Ministry of Justice? Really?  The Land Registry will be part of the Department for Business, Innovations and Skills - that seems like an odd combination. Why are there no links to any of the supporting materials mentioned in the press release. The "previous work on the Feasibility Study"? The "findings reported to ministers"? Why was this not announced earlier than on the day it actually happened? Why is the enabling legislation coming into force after the change happens - why was it not made and in force in advance of this move? So...the moneymaking Government departments are being hived off into a mysterious body called a PDO,...

The GNN (or Government News Network) was nice. It published the press releases from all the Government departments, and if, like me, you prefered to pick them up through an RSS feed instead of emails, it was lovely, helpful, efficient. On the 1 April 2008, after quietly announcing it on the 28th March 2008 on their site (where, if you're using their RSS feeds you will never go), the GNN became NDS (News Distribution Service). They boldly stated "The look and branding of this site have therefore changed, although the services remain the same." Nuh-uh. If you took the RSS feeds, these are now all dead, as they are coming from a different web address. Emails of the press releases are coming from a new address too apparently. This meant, for me anyway, re-registering as a new user (as they seemed to have wiped my account in the process) and re-subscribing to all the feeds again. Not a great start to the day! Especially when the Government had just announced the " Power ...

I'm quite liking this - the Scottish Government are trying new things with technology, in this case, paying to put anti drink-driving adverts in billboards in X Box driving games. Definitely an interesting way to get the message across, and I suppose it also doubles as a type of tourist advert, as it doesn't say anything about the ads being restricted to players in Scotland only? Either way, it bodes well for a Government to be as comfortable with using different media as this one looks to be! What next....

Links to some documents from 2007 and 2006 on the old DTI site still work, so at least we can still access them (for now). Links to some pages from 2006 and 2007 actually have a redirect…which is an advance. Apart from the fact that the redirect takes me to a page that I’m ‘not authorised to view’ 1. You are not authorized to view this page You might not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials you supplied. If you believe you should be able to view this directory or page, please try to contact the Web site by using any e-mail address or phone number that may be listed on the www.dti.gov.uk home page. You can click Search to look for information on the Internet. 2. HTTP Error 403 - Forbidden Internet Explorer I think it’s an advance, but I’m not altogether sure….although the fact that a redirect from a DTI page to a BERR page ...

Ok, so as well as deciding to suddenly change departments / name with no notice (in itself enough to make me scream with frustration), those clever chaps and chapesses at the ex-DTI have gone one step further…and shifted most of the materials onto the new www.berr.gov.uk web address. With no redirects. Wonderful. Here comes a good few weeks of altering every single damn link to their materials that we’ve ever posted to our current awareness service. Even changing the ‘dti’ part of the web address to ‘berr’ doesn’t work. They helpfully tell me this when I click on a link: “ The DTI web page or document you are looking for has not been found. Administration The DTI web page or document you are looking for has not been found. We have restructured our website, and the information you are looking for has been moved, or you have clicked on an inaccurate link. If you are looking for a specific piece of information, you may find it easier to use the ...

Thanks to Binary Law , I now know that the DTI has become something unpronounceable, the DBERR. Is it ‘deeber’? ‘debeer’? ‘deberr’ (which allows me to say: to deberr is human, to forgive, debine?) Fingers crossed that they decide to be sensible about the whole process, and don’t just decide to shift the whole site, with no redirects, thereby rendering entirely useless the work of anybody who’s spend any time creating weblinks to any of their information…yup, that’d be me then! Wonder if they’ll also fix the fact that their inbuilt websearch is the biggest excuse for a user enhancement I’ve ever seen, and has yet to ever actually work for me. Google and site specific searching is the only way I’ve been able to drag anything out of its depths! And did I miss any prior notification of this? As of yesterday, their site was DTI, today it’s morphing (logo gone, I assume the new one’s coming), but no hint of todays change. Today, it’s their entire front page. Have I been selectively bl...