Movement for change Poor design of websites of government agencies
The websites of most government agencies are poorly designed. They are complicated, confusing and often have bugs. They cause the general public to waste a lot of time in submitting transactions with these agencies. 

Some people commented that the poor design is due to outsourcing of the development work to certain countries. 

I disagree.

The poor design is largely the fault of the government agency, and not the contracted developers. 

In the design of the website and the processes, the planners often make the following mistakes:

a) They over-automate and put in too many checks
b) They provide too many explanations that lead to confusion.
c) They make it too interactive and provide many pages

Consequently, the processes are often too complicated and error prone. The public user feels the brunt of the poor design.

To make matters worse, after investing a very large sum of money in the development of the website, it is difficult to make changes. The planners are reluctant to change the design. It will incur another large cost and they will find it difficult to justify the initial outlay.

So, the poorly designed website remained unchanged for years and often for more than a decade.

The arrogant attitude of the political leaders worsen the problem. They ignore public feedback or make up lame excuses and do not follow up. 

Nobody wants to take the responsibility.

A well designed website or business process will probably cost a fraction of the money that is spent by the government agencies and can improve the user experience and business efficiency. 

Sadly, nobody cares.

Tan Kin Lian

 


 

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