Engaging With The Electorate Online - 
The government's policy of providing key services through the Internet is a commendably brave one. As a progressive, forward thinking administration this government has rightly identified that the Internet is where the future lies and that anybody wishing to engage with them through more conventional means is the worst kind of luddite. As a means of making a point the above statement is a little extreme but in their haste to turn the world online I wonder if our public servants have sought to understand whether or not the public actually 'want' to engage with them in this fashion? It is worth thinking about.

However, reality withstanding, the public services are moving to the Internet as a platform so how can they make an evaluation of their online assets? There are a number of questions that first need to be considered. Who are my audience? Why are they visiting me? What is their first language? Is it English? What is their reading age likely to be? Many public sector websites need to present a lot of information and what seems an obvious solution is to provide downloadable documents. But if their reading ability is poor they will find heavy documentation intimidating, most people skim information presented to them rather than reading it line by line. Information must therefore be presented in an easily digestible format with key points made at the start.

On analysis of several government sites it is clear that the average reading age of their intended audience is about 14, or the same as The Telegraph. Are they sure their customers have this level of literacy? 3 million Sun readers can't be wrong. The second set of questions concerns usability and accessibility. What is the likely demand for this service? What level of accessibility should the site deliver? What type of hardware do we need? Usability and accessibility should always concern us when developing an online service, but the attention paid should arguably differ.

There has also been a lot made of 'accessibility' and rightly so. How frustrating it is to have a whole new world at your fingertips which has the potential to level a vastly unfair playing field only to be failed by your eyesight or intellect. W3C have worked with the government helping them to develop guidelines on accessibility which cover 4 levels.

It is important to note though that these 'guidelines' are just that. In essence the drive to be 'accessible' has to be weighed up against realistic objectives. For most sites a level 2 compliance is reasonable.

To provide some perspective a level 4 site would have no pictures and only text. Ultimately it is imperative that in order to provide the public services the electorate desire via the Internet the government starts looking at 'outcomes' rather than 'inputs'.

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