In addition to the sun rising in the west, and my dog declaring his intent to become a vegan, Whitehouse.gov has gotten a facelift. Naturally, I immediately went to the Office of Management and Budget, a site I use very often, and which is nearly legendary in its ability to hide any piece of information that anyone outside the OMB might want to lay their hands on, like fr'instance historical budget data. The ability to quickly lay hands on OMB information is a skill that has taken me years to hone, and provides substantial professional advantage.
The site was also uglier than a warthog in velour.
You'll be pleased to know that the new site is very smart looking. Unfortunately, that sleekness has been achieved by tucking even more of that unsightly information out of the way, where it won't mar the vista.
Why is government IT so awful? It seems like the first thing people are going to want, when they go to the Office of Management and Budget, is, like, to look at the Budget. Yet the budget isn't even on the OMB servers, apparently--it's hosted at the GPOaccess site. I have, to be sure, seen private websites that were this awful. But not that many, and the companies that had them usually either redesigned them right quick, or went out of business. Instead the government has preserved all the problems with the old site, added new ones, and given us in exchange . . . a glossy photograph of Barack Obama looking solemn.
I am sure that there is some stupid bureaucratic logic behind putting the budget information elsewhere. But I'm not sure my heart can stand finding out what it is.
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Why is government IT so awful? Part of it is bizarre regulations, about where things are hosted, what technology you need to use, who has to approve what, and so on. I have a friend who is working on a page for the EPA. It would have taken 5 minutes to do a script, but there are all sorts of rules about scripts which would have made that a Big Deal, needed approval and servers and such, so it would have cost thousands to do that, so they've ended up doing hundreds and hundreds of static html pages instead.
Obama's first name is also misspelled on that page.
Good software is hard to write and very few programmers can do it. However, in this case I don't really think your complaint has much merit if you are looking for a recent budget.
I just went to the OMB site for my first time ever. They have a link to the 2009 budget prominently displayed on their home page. The link takes you to a simple page on the gpo site with links to the last 14 budgets. Total time to figure this out: 20 seconds.
It did take me 1 more minute to find the older budgets...these turned out to be archived on a different site so I agree that seems a bit odd. But it still was painless to find them.
Have you ever had occasion to us an actual government computer running a UNIX-based database of some sort? The kind that librarians used to use to track books, or which are still used for case management by innumerable municipal courts, in which each of the function keys has a mysterious purpose and to save and quit you need to type something intuitive like Alt-x Ctrl-c F4?
Right, well, they're still using that system, and the web pages are designed to be backwards compatible with it.
I go to CBO for federal budget data. I find that site fairly easy to use.
I have, to be sure, seen private websites that were this awful. But not that many, and the companies that had them usually either redesigned them right quick, or went out of business.
I'm arguing by anecdote here so maybe this won't be that effective....
My experience has been that building a high-quality website requires a major effort (graphic designers, photographers, web programmers, database experts, etc.). Most small-to-medium sized companies just don't have the resources to fund the level of effort required to do the job right.
Every company I've worked for in the last 10 years had a mediocre site at best and they are all still in business.
Megan's mistake is her apparent belief that the website is there to provide her with information, rather than to act as a government-funded campaign website.
The mistake in Obama's name is humorous, though.
Hmmmm, I went to the NHTSA website last week to look up recall information on my car and found their recalls database in about 30 seconds. Entered the make, model and year of my car in pull down boxes and 30 seconds later had a list of all recalls. Finding this information was easier than finding the customer support phone number on the Amazon.com website.
Megan,
Government has a lot of information, so I am not surprised to find it hard to find what I am looking for sometimes, but you can usually find it eventually.
However, I would also point out that making information easy to find is almost never a government priority, and making it hard to find often is.
"Why is government IT so awful?"
because government THEY are so awful.
Government IT is not any more awful than corporate IT. Try to navigate Citbank's website and you will quickly see that it is no easier to find information there than it is in the OMB site. MM's comment is simply another reason to bash government, something which is as natural to her as taking a crap. Unfortunately it is of no value to the rest of us.
I had a similar issue today. I just checked the news, and the war in Iraq is still going on, even though President Obama specifically promised to end it. Is it too much to ask that, during the two and a quarter hours he's been President already, he completely overhaul the government's websites and end the war in Iraq? Megan and I don't think so.
And not to nitpick, but OMB's website misspelling the name of the new president on the front page is not reaqssuring.
Same reason everything else the government does just straight-up sucks, no competition, no incentives.
I suspect one problem is the legacy from the past. For example, the Government Printing Office is under Congress, not the Executive Branch. And, in the days of hot type, GPO had to print all government documents so the official copy of things like regulations, laws, and budgets resided with GPO. The last I bothered to check GPO was trying to reinvent itself, but still maintain its monopoly on the "official" copy of documents. And last I knew its documents weren't Googlable.
I don't know how the webmasters of the executive branch have dealt with this, but I suspect not very well. Of course, it's foolish to expect Congress and the President to get together on redoing this system--it's not going to happen.
Protip:
Don't bother trying to navigate government sites. Be smart and use search.
For this example, adding "site:www.whitehouse.gov/omb/" to your Google query will make life a lot easier.
Obama's picture looks strangely distorted, like they squished the picture to fit & ensure the guy on the left (presumably, the new OMB head) is in the photo
Government websites aren't particularly worse than the typical corporate intranet site.
Even when a company puts effort into the design of a public facing profit-center like a web store, the intranet isn't a profit center so is often poorly designed.
If you think that’s a bit pretentious, do a right-click with your mouse to see what they named the photograph.
Maybe the difference is that someone is paying attention. When I just visited the OMB to check out your critique, "OMB Highlights" was the first thing I saw with "FY 2009 Budget" and a link to the GPO site underneath.
I'm not very smart so you'll have to forgive my confusion. It took me two clicks of a mouse button to get from the OMB homepage to the 2009 Federal budget. Was that not the federal budget you were trying to get to? Again, forgive me, 'cause I'm real stupid so I must've found the wrong budget.
It takes me about 9 clicks to get to the data I use most often--historical budget data--and only because I know where to look for it. Given that the budget is the main reason people go to the damn OMB, it should take three or four, and not include a stupid notice that you're leaving the Whitehouse.gov servers.
On the other hand, whitehouse.gov launched a blog today, and posted it first five posts all at 12:01 PM EST, literally as soon as humanly possible
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/
Because the sites are not desinged for the public. They are designed for the Secretaries / Under Secretaries / Official People who are important.
Seriously, take a customer oriented website like amazon.com and find % of space related to the corporation (IIRC, a coulple of text links to investor info and the like). Go to your favorite .gov site, and you are probably going to find near communist cult of personality levels of personal pictures / bios of the people in charge.
I'm counting 4 clicks to get to budget data. I don't really see the big deal. Its certainly easier than setting up bill payment at Bank of America.
Thorley Winston,
What you describe with respect to the name of the headshot JPEG of the President (it feels nice to write that without reflexively sneering, BTW) on the homepage of the OMB site is not any sort of adulation or personally directed sarcasm, but rather a filename token encountered in a lot of enterprise settings...
As filename tokens go, 'hero' derives from 'hero shot' which is a snarky allusion to the page-spanning stock headshots of smart-looking ass-savers that often appear on marketing-focused corpsites. Filename tokens being what they are, usage becomes habitual even when the underlying content is of a different flavor entirely.
I use 'banner' for that case when I get to choose the filename tokens, but then my own brand of snark involves speaking frankly around people who are accustomed to being told what they want to hear. It takes all kinds, ya know?
Why not just start at:
http://www.usa.gov/
Also, you have to remember that the government sites are designed so people who don't have broadband can still access information in a reasonable time. So, you won't get a lot of flashy graphics. Not everyone in this country has access to high speed internet.
The government websites are also designed to be accessible by people with disabilities.
They broke my bookmark to historical budget data, but I was able to find it again inside of a minute. These pages actually aren't that bad, even if they are pretentious as hell. I've seen much worse from other governments. None of them are at the level of Statistics New Zealand, who emailed me all the series I asked for within half an hour of their office opening on a Monday(seriously, I was floored by how efficient they were at helping me), but it's no more frustrating than a whole lot of other sites I've seen.
I have to disagree with Kristian. Most Secretaries/Under Secs barely know how to use email or the internet. Kidding aside, the reason government IT is so terrible is two fold.
First, the byzantine rules and laws from Congress and OMB/NIST - from accessibility to records requirements to security - make it almost impossible to do anything cool or useful. Why can't Obama use a blackberry? Because the Federal Records Act hasn't been updated in 20 years. Why can't Fed websites be "more like Amazon"? Because they are prohibited from using cookies and severely restricted in their ability to store any sort of user data.
Second, the combination of the civil service/GS system and the budget cuts of the 90's in everything non-DoD has made it impossible for government agencies to hire and retain talented people. Basically all strategic IT decisions are made by a room full of gray beards who at best were trained on punch cards (though most do not actually have a technical background or interest in learning about anything new if it isn't being pitched by a vendor). While the personnel gap is filled by contractors, the government side generally has no clue and so cannot provide effective oversight of vendors whose financial interest is in projects never quite working right so they can come back for more.
I am sure that there is some stupid bureaucratic logic behind putting the budget information elsewhere.
I imagine that the logic will become apparent once you actually take a look at the budget.
Click 1. OMB site.
Click 2. FY2009 Budget.
Click 3. Yes, yes, send me a long to gpoaccess.
Click 4. Fy2009 Budget.
*scrolly wheel action*
Click 5. Historical tables.
What do I win?
(Does it count that I used to acquire govdocs for a living and I knew that Historical Tables are part of every budget?)
Well, right now if you click on "President's Budget" on whitehouse.gov/omb, you get the dreaded 404 Page Not Found message.
Why can't Fed websites be "more like Amazon"?
Here's a tip, because they don't make money off of it. Find a company that doesn't expect to make money off of their website (or even advertise) and it will be nothing like Amazon. Try boeing.com for an example. It looks much like a government website. Amazon has a slick website because their business model is having a slick website where they sell you things. I'd prefer the government just stick to a simple website, since they don't need anything else. Do we really want bloated and slow to load website that take a ton of resources when there's no need?
I'm reminded of that classic Michael Palin line in Brazil.
"This is Information Retrieval, not Information Dispersal!!!"