[Digital-Mentor] Tender is open for Digital Mentors!

[MJ Ray]

"Dave Briggs" <db at davepress.net> [forwarded]:
> There is also a forum for those wishing to explore aspects of the
> specification should you wish. See
> http://haveyoursay.communities.gov.uk/forums/.  [...]

Does anyone else find the "Join now! >>" button on the "Register" link
on that site greyed out?  It's completely unusable for me!  I've tried
the "Contact Us" form which did work, but says they'll reply within 15
days.  15 days???  How many contact forms are they getting?  Losing 15
days access to the main discussions now is going to be a bit of a
disadvantage, isn't it?

There's no OpenID or ability to use a login from another gov.uk site,
of course.

<rant>
One of the biggest deterrents to having anything to do with these
Digital Mentors and Digital Inclusion programmes is the utter
obstructiveness of CLG's communications.  If I was involved in a
successful bid for those programmes, would I be spending months
dealing with this sort of rubbish?

Stuff that could be online as web pages is put on as PDFs instead.
Stuff that is on as web pages is non-standard-Javascripted and
Active-X-controlled up the wazoo. The "conforms to WAI double AA
rating" in their accessibility policy is simply untrue.  Even on the
accessibility page, there's a "You must enable Javascript" message!
Argh!

Why is CLG allowed to lead gov.uk Digital Inclusion?  It seems like
certain other recent gov.uk "simplification" programmes which have
resulted in services being run by groups with the keyword in their
names, rather than groups that have track records of providing the
service.

One of the biggest things CLG could do to support broader take-up of
online systems is to simplify their websites and communications to a
point where they actually work from all devices. For a real culture
shock, let's restrict the site owners to accessing them from a small
non-Windows mobile phone for a day and see how much of their own
online information they can actually use.
</rant>

I'd welcome help on using the forum without completely changing my
browser, system configuration, ... or if there's some way to get
involved with a bid without dealing with CLG's web applications.

Getting depressed about the public sector again,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef)
Webmaster for hire, statistician and online shop builder for a small
worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
(Notice http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html) tel:+44-844-4437-237