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Internet Explorer Required: Your Comments

Posted on: Monday, 26 September 2005, 18:00 CDT

By Gibbs, Mark

Last week's column discussing how the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Individual Assistance Center Web site required people filing claims to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6.0 generated a lot of feedback.

Reader Gary McMillian wrote that this obsession with Internet Explorer isn't restricted to FEMA: "The [Department of Defense] insists on [Internet Explorer] to submit invoices through their new Wide Area Work Flow [WAWF] system. At some point in the future [the original deadline has passed], if you don't use WAWF [and Internet Explorer] then you won't be able to invoice the [Defense Department] and receive payment for work done."

But that's not all.McMillian continued:"To add to the insult, the group responsible for payments, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, requires [Internet Explorer] to access their invoice inquiry system."

He agrees that legislation is required to keep the federal government from mandating use of a particular vendor's browser. Me, I think this requirement should extend to all federal and state government departments as part of a larger strategy that makes government information and services as widely accessible as possible to Internet users.

But not all readers agreed. David Gray wrote, "I'm not a big fan of government, but as a Webmaster and developer, I have to disagree with your comments regarding government requiring [Internet Explorer].What would you say if they postponed having a Web site to make sure it was compatible with the 10% to 15% of the other users? I'm sure you'd complain that they don't have a Web site!"

Having a Web site is a big step forward and, disregarding the question of whether the content is really useful on these sites, the elephant-in-the-room-sized issue is why is the FEMA site browser- specific? We're talking about fill-' ing out forms, not presenting exotic multimedia content.

A possible answer is that FEMA, like the Copyright Office, uses a back-end system (the Copyright Office uses Siebel) that doesn't integrate with anything but Internet Explorer. I can't imagine how or why this limitation exists, but it shows a remarkable lack of foresight on the part of any department that uses such restrictive infrastructure this late in the game.

Even so, Gray saw this glass as half full:"This is government. Be happy that they even have a site available!"

I also got a note from reader Wonko the Sane (so he claims) that pointed out: "You don't have to go back far ι in Internet history to know that all the Requests For ' Comment, which are in truth the de facto standards of the Internet, must be submitted in plain text - the lowest common denominator - so that any word or text processor can read them."

He continued, "the fact remains that plain text is the rule. If the basics are good enough for the Internet itself, they should be good enough for everybody else."

Wonko pointed out that "increasing numbers of computer users are moving to open standards such as Linux, and those institutions who insist on going with the proprietary flow will alienate a growing number of customers."

Going back to Gray, he also raised the issue that we live in a democracy "in which the majority rules. And since 85% to 90% of users use [Internet Explorer], I'd say [the government is] catering to the majority for a change."

I must again disagree. A crucial goal of government should be to provide service to the greater good, which is, in fact, an objective that it embraced a long time ago.

In pursuit of this goal the government mandated Universal Service for telephones and provides services in more than just English, despite English being the majority language. It also mandated provision for handicapped access despite the majority being able- bodied.

So when it comes to Web browsers, the majority are not defined by having IE6+ but through being HTML 4compatible. Moreover, don't you think in the litany of world-class screw-ups that characterized the government's response to the New Orleans disaster, the fact that this Web service didn't exist before the flood shows just how disconnected FEMA has become from the job it was supposed to be capable of doing?

Your answers to backspin@gibbs.com. PS. Check out Gearblog (www.networkworld.com/weblogs/gearblog/).

Copyright Network World Inc. Sep 19, 2005

Source: Network World

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