RE: "Improving Access to Government through Better Use of the Web" review comments

 Hello Jose,

I have one comment to feed back. 

I understand the difference between a technical guideline and nontechnical document. Whilst W3C guidelines strive for being readable only by guideline editors -:), other docucments target broader audience. Still "wild wild web" type of things are not suitable for any kind of official deliverable. You may consider putting together an achronym list and explain all abbreviations there and even add links to standards or whatever applicable. You can also have a glossary. Alternatively you explain achronyms and new terms on the first instance of their occurrence. 

Also sticking to polite/politically correct and simple language and simple document structure always helps. 

Anna

-----Original Message-----
From: ext Jose M. Alonso [mailto:josema@w3.org] 
Sent: 21 April, 2009 12:34
To: Zhuang Anna (Nokia-D-MSW/Tampere)
Cc: eGovernment Interest Group WG; Kevin Novak
Subject: Re: "Improving Access to Government through Better Use of the Web" review comments

Anna,

Thanks for you suggestions. There are three main things I'd like to highlight though:

1) This is _not_ a recommendation track document, i.e. it's not a standards document. We have been referring to it as an "issues document" to highlight all of the challenges.

2) The language used in many cases is due to the intended audience, not developers nor implementors of a technical specification but higher level people and people that cannot understand well the standards jargon. One of the main goals of this Group is to make W3C better speak in government terms.

3) I'm attaching to this same ISSUE-24 ongoing suggestions by Rachel, Sharron and others on plain language use. I think that reworking the document with all that in mind would be beneficial.

Best,
Jose.


El 20/04/2009, a las 18:28, Jose M. Alonso escribió:
> Attaching this one to ISSUE-24, also related to ISSUE-10 and ISSUE-13, 
> and copying Kevin who is in the main author of those sections.
>
> -- Jose
>
>
> El 30/03/2009, a las 11:19, <Anna.Zhuang@nokia.com> 
> <Anna.Zhuang@nokia.com
> > escribió:
>> Dear eGOV IG,
>>
>> Some high level comments to "Improving Access to Government through 
>> Better Use of the Web":
>>
>> * I don't think the language this document is using is the right one 
>> for a guideline produced by a standardization body.
>>
>> * Abstract: "governments and their citizenry" sounds like Her Royal 
>> Highness the Queen and Her subjects. That is not the right 
>> terminology for a standard. Also this phrase ommits the fact that a 
>> government page may be accessed by a citizen of another country for 
>> various reasons like e.g. aspiring a new job in a new country. So 
>> there is no need for any distinction between so to say citizenries.
>> I assume that some government pages must be universally accessible 
>> whereas some pages are accessible by providing e.g. social security 
>> number.
>>
>> * The end of the first sentence in the abstract is not clear on 
>> "departments and divisions". It probably refers to the earlier part 
>> of the sentence explaining parts of government bodies. So the whole 
>> sentence should be simplified to say that eGovernment should serve 
>> the purpose of communication with the people, communication between 
>> gifferent structures within a government and for communication 
>> between governments of different countries.
>>
>> * I started reading and editing the Introduction but then gave up 
>> reading it alltogether. Again the language is wrong. Don't say "so 
>> called Web 2.0" or "wild wild web". This document is not a place to 
>> judge technologies or make jokes.
>>
>> * The Introduction is too long and does not serve the purpose of 
>> introducing the document. It  is more of a prologue. The Introduction 
>> should be reduced to several paragraphs that concentrate on the scope 
>> of the document, what issues it tries to address rather than giving a 
>> history of WWW development.
>>
>> * Background subsection of the Intruduction seems to explain the 
>> scope of work of the eGovernment working group. If this is important 
>> message to deliver as part of this guideline,  why not to isolate it 
>> as a separate section and may be change the title to "Scope of 
>> Egovernment WG work". However if deliverables of eGovernment group 
>> are well exposed in the document, this Background section should go 
>> alltogether.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Anna Zhuang
>>
>>
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 22 April 2009 08:27:44 UTC