2013 update Are Australia's web developers failing to deliver accessible websites?

In a recent story in ITNews, Accessibility checker surfaces errors, John Hibbert claimed that a new Mental Health website, www.mindhealthconnect.org.au, operated by the National Health Call Centre Network and funded by the Department of Health and Ageing, didn't meet the Australian Government's minimum web standards.

Based on a review using the ACheck tool for the minimum WCAG 2.0 'A' level of compliance, John reported that the checker:

highlighted two known problems, 245 "potential problems", 20 HTML validation errors and 115 cascading style sheet problems on the site.

I tend to always take the results of these tools with a grain of salt. Many of the reported validation errors and style sheet issues are often repeats of one single issue, or are not really issues at all, and the two known problems would take a couple of minutes to fix and do not pose direct accessibility risks at all.

However this article does highlight a concern I've had for several years - whether Web Developers, contracted to produce these sites for government, always have the appropriate skills and knowledge to develop accessible websites.

I've seen this type of issue repeated a number of times. A policy or program area, possibly with support from a central communication or IT area, goes out to tender for a website. Web Developers respond, get assessed and the successful tenderer goes about creating the site.

A few months later the site is complete with days to spare before the Ministerial launch - but fails accessibility testing by the agency.

"We didn't understand how important accessibility was to you" says the Web Developer. Note that I was in the room when these exact words were said to an agency by a reputable web developer regarding a website which was developed iteratively and we'd been giving them feedback about accessibility for a number of weeks.

So what happens next?

If accessibility was not explicit mentioned in the contract, the Web Developer asks for more cash to meet the requirement, even though it is a baseline requirement for all government websites across Australia, and says it won't be ready for launch.

If an accessibility level was explicitly agreed to in the contract, the Web Developer grudgingly assigns a junior developer to 'sort it out' - with a vague promise that it will be done in a few weeks or months.

The agency is left having to launch a website which doesn't meet the minimum and fix it as soon as possible afterwards - all because the Web Developer didn't recognise and act on the legal requirement for accessibility.

Of course there's many examples where Web Developers have done exceptional accessibility work for agencies, however I have seen and heard too many issues where professional Web Developers didn't understand the accessibility requirements of governments.

Delivering an inaccessible website to a government agency will cause that agency to break the law and expose it to enormous risks of legal damages. No vendor should ever put their client in this type of position knowingly, particularly where it is so easily avoidable.

My view is that any Web Developer that doesn't deliver a government website to at least the minimum accessible standards (unless otherwise explicitly agreed to by the agency in question) should not receive any payment until they have addressed all accessibility issues.

They should also lose their right to bid for other government business until they can prove they have fully trained their staff on accessible web design.

These may be harsh and strong measures, and I doubt they will be considered due to contractual and practical issues.

However if a vendor contracted to sell a government agency a car that turned out to not be street legal or rent them a building that turned out to not meet the building code, government would walk away without paying and ask for damages, plus be very cautious about working with that vendor again.

Why should it be any different with illegal websites?

2013 update How Facebook has become a risk for public servants, and what you can do about it

If you are one of the majority of public servants with a Facebook account, then it may be time to reconsider how you use the service.

As discussed in ZDNet's post, Is Facebook damaging your reputation with sneaky political posts?, Facebook is now posting messages in your timeline and saying you 'Like' the messages simply because you once 'Liked' the Facebook Page that posted them.

So what does this mean, and how is it a risk to public servants?  Here's how it works.

When you 'Like' a Page in Facebook, Facebook assumes this means you also like all the content, status updates, images and other material, that may be posted on that Page by its administrators.

To be 'helpful' Facebook will automatically place some of the Page's content in the newsfeeds of your Facebook friends, with a notice that you 'Like' the content.

Facebook calls this a feature, as quoted in the ZDNet article,

To help people find new Pages, events, and other interesting information, people may now see posts from a Page a friend likes. These posts will include the social context from your friends who like the Page and will respect all existing settings.

This may sound innocent enough, but what it means in practice is that if you ever 'Liked' a Facebook Page for any reason, any new content posted in that Page may now appear to your friends as explicitly 'Liked' by you.

As Pages can change administrator, content and focus, that innocuous Facebook Page on pet rabbits you liked two years ago may now start spewing controversial, obnoxious or otherwise inappropriate content into your Facebook friends' newsfeeds - with each piece of content indicating that you 'Liked' it.

This could merely be embarassing, or it could put your career at risk.

Say you 'Liked' a Facebook Page for a charity you support that works in a policy area covered by your agency. Due to a change in government policy, that charity loses funding and, as a result, begins posting messages on its Facebook Page which are strongly critical of the government's new policy to galvanise their supporters to write to the Minister. Even worse, one of the Page's administrators has been radicalised and frames some of these messages in very strong, almost abusive, language.

These messages begin appearing in the newsfeeds of your friends, complete with a notice that YOU 'Liked' them. Incidentally, you don't see them yourself because Facebook doesn't notify you that they're doing this and these messages don't appear in your own newsfeed.

One of your friends (a colleague at your agency) is horrified that you'd act so unprofessionally and sends screenshots of the messages with your 'Like' to HR, notifying them that you've broken the public service code of conduct by publicly criticising your agency and the government.

You get called in for a discussion with your manager and a HR representative, who shows you the screenshot and asks you to explain your conduct...

Will they believe you when you claim ignorance?


Now compound this issue by thinking about every single Facebook Page that you've every Liked.

Any of them could begin posting messages which could embarrass you, or threaten your job and, thanks to this Facebook feature, indicate automatically that you 'Liked' each message.

Even worse you don't even know when they're doing it because you don't see these messages in your own newsfeed.


So what should you do to deal with this?

Assuming that you're not prepared to close down your Facebook page or, at least, unLike all pages that you have liked, I recommend that public servants look at their 'Likes' page (accessible from their Favourites page) and cast an eye over the pages they've Liked to see if any are likely to post content that will get them in trouble in their friends' newsfeed.

Then make this a regular habit - check all your pages every month to see what they're saying.

Finally, bring this issue with Facebook to your agency's attention, so you'll not be accused of 'Liking' content you didn't.

How do you know that's really a government social media account?

On the internet, as they say, no-one knows if you're a dog - or a government agency.

This can become a problem when Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, even websites, are set up that look like government accounts, but aren't.

We've seen this issue in the private sector, such as with fake Shell accounts that took in the media and the public.

It has also happened in the public sector, most often in the US and the UK.

It happens here in Australia too. Do we really know whether, for example, @ACTGov is a government Twitter account, or a fake account? (in fact I'm not really sure, but don't think it is)

This can obviously create problems for citizens and for governments. What if citizens get taken in by a fake account and make a poor financial or health decision?

What responsibility does the government has to ensure that citizens don't get defrauded in this way?

The US government has now taken steps to address this in a proactive way (ie - before there's a media scandal).

As reported by the eGovernment Resource Centre, the US government is developing a new tool that verifies the authenticity of government social media sites.

The tool will require agencies to use a special system that only allows people with authentic government email accounts to register their official government social media accounts.

There will then be a public validation facility on leading US government sites where users can check whether a particular account in listed or not.

This turns the burden of proof around. If an agency fails to register its accounts, they will have lower authenticity because they won't be in the central database. This provides an incentive for agencies to register.

Users can check whether accounts are listed and feel secure that if one is then it is government operated.

Simple but smart. It protects citizens and also keeps track of government social media accounts, allowing a central directory to be crowdsourced.

I wonder if our government will consider similar steps to protect Australians and promote engagement with agencies?

It isn't a hard system to build, and it isn't expensive to operate.

Is it theft if you personalise & retain an official social media account when you leave an organisation?

One of the legal and ethical dilemmas organisations are beginning to struggle with is the ownership of social media accounts.

When a staff member creates and uses a social media account solely or mainly for official organisational purposes they can build a large following over months or years based entirely on their paid work activities.

However are they entitled to take that account, and the accumulated goodwill it holds, with them when they leave?


This might seem like a trivial question, however the followers and reputation built by a social media account may be no different to the brand name value that organisations such as Google and Coca-Cola count on their balance sheets.

Almost every organisation that deals with the public values its name and reputation with the public as an asset alongside the physical property of the business.

Whether you think of Starbucks, Microsoft, Ford or Joe's Mowing Service, the name and reputation of the business, as well as its contact list (like followers or Likes), has an asset value.

I believe this is also true for digital accounts, and there are cases going to court at the moment around the world where individuals who took an official social media account with them are being sued for the asset value by their employers.

One such case last year, as reported in Sean Clark's blog, involved a company called Phonedog, where a former employee, Noah Kravitz, tried to take a Twitter account with him by changing the name of the account from @Phonedog_Noah to @NoahKravitz.

The account had 17,000 followers and Phonedog took him to court for the value of $2.50 per follower per month ($42,500/mth), calling the followers a customer list, with the value attributed to the cost associated with growing and maintaining the list.

You can read more about this at What's a Twitter follower really worth.


So let's consider this in an Australian context. There are several senior public servants who use Twitter for official purposes - using their actual name in the account.

In particular Hank Jongen (@HankJongen) from the Department of Human Services and Sandi Logan (@Sandihlogan) from the Department of Immigration, whose accounts were primarily established and are operated as official communications channels for their agencies.

Besides these is another senior public servant, John Sheridan from AGIMO in the Department of Finance, whose Twitter account (@sherro58) is used for official purposes, but also for personal use - it was not primarily established or is operated mainly as an official communications channel.

My view would be that both Hank and Sandi's accounts are organisational assets, whereas John's account is his personal asset that he lends to the agency - similar to how, when I worked in government, I occasionally retweeted official agency tweets to bring them to the attention of a wider audience (my larger follower base), but my account was never an official agency channel.

Based on the model used by PhoneDog ($2.50 per follower per month), the value of Hank and Sandi's accounts are as follows:

Account	Followers	Value/month	Value/year
@HankJongen	807	$2,017	$24,210
@SandiHLogan	3,912	$9,780	$117,360

Now the values are based on the number of followers remaining static, which is unlikely, and the actual value of a follower may vary based on the customer relationship. However there is a real value for these relationships, which is a real asset for their organisations - particularly when trying to communicate or defend complex positions.

In all the cases I've illustrated above the public servants behave very ethically, and I would not expect this to change, so I don't see them as risks to their organisations of leaving and taking their followers with them.

However this will not always be the case for all social media accounts.


In fact there is a recent example I can think of where I think the ethics are much grayer and which may even require an investigation.

This is in relation to the former QLD Labor Premier, Anna Bligh.

Anna was an enthusiastic adopter of social media for engaging citizens - and I applaud her for this - however I don't know if there has been much consideration of the asset value of the account she used to Tweet as the QLD Premier, or whether she had the right to rename this as '@AnnaMBligh' and take it with her when she resigned from politics.

Let's run through the history....

Anna became premier in 2007 and continued to use the Twitter account she'd been using up to that point, renaming it '@Premier_Bligh'.

At this point you could argue that this was her personal account, which she lent to the State of Queensland for official use. I would have no issue if she took it with her when she left politics (it also only currently has 4,769 followers).

However in 2009 Anna set up a specific account as the "official Queensland Premier's twitter account". She even announced it on her pre-existing account as below:

My view is that the language and manner of the launch of this account makes it clear that it was to be the property of the Government of Queensland. An official Twitter account to be used by Anna and all Queensland Premiers following her. It was not to be the personal account of Anna Bligh (who already had one) or the property of the QLD Labor party.

However, following the recent Queensland election, where the Labor party lost government and Anna, while retaining her seat decided to resign from the QLD parliament, Anna did not hand this account over to the incoming Premier, Campbell Newman.

Instead she renamed the account as @AnnaMBligh and has continued to use it as her personal account since the election.

Meanwhile her former personal account (currently named @Premier_Bligh) has remained inactive since May 2009.

The incoming Premier has repeated the initial and, in my view, quite legitimate steps taken by Anna Bligh. His personal account @Campbell_Newman is now inactive, and he created a new Twitter account on March 26, naming it the same as former official QLD Premier account @theqldpremier.

So it all balances out - or does it?

The Twitter account that Anna Bligh designated the "official Queensland Premier's twitter account", that she now operates as a personal Twitter account, currently has 30,773 followers.

The new official Twitter account that Campbell Newman has designated for the Premier has only 4,496 followers.

That's a difference of 26,277 followers that Anna accumulated over three years while tweeting officially on behalf of the government.

Let's go back to the Phonedog case... If we consider these Twitter followers as a 'customer list' (for the purposes of official government engagement), we can attribute a lost value to the QLD Government - and thereby QLD citizens - associated with the costs of growing and maintaining the list.

Let's use that $2.50 value per month again - noting that a court would have to test whether this is the right value for each follower of any particular official Twitter account.

On this basis the difference of 26,277 followers is worth  $65,692 per month to the QLD Government.

Ergo, the cost to Queensland of Anna Bligh taking the official Premier's Twitter account home with her for personal use, and denying its use to the Government of Queensland, is currently running at a rate of $65,692 per month.

The maximum potential cost to Queensland to-date, assuming the official QLD Premier account has had the same level of followers since start of May 2009 to end of April 2012 (36 months), would be $2,364,930.

I estimate a more reasonable cost would be in the $1-$1.5 million range - based on $2.50 per follower per month.

So is this actually theft?

Should it be considered similar to a Minister taking home their office furniture for personal use after they lost office?

That's for governments and courts to decide for certain.

However it is undeniable that the 'official Queensland Premier's twitter account", its followers and their relationship with the Government have been removed from Government control and now reside in the hands of a private citizen, to do with as they will.

Other organisations, both public and private sector organisations really do need to think about this example in their own context:

• Are your official social media accounts assets?
• What asset/brand value should you place on them?
• What should you do if a staff member leaves and takes one, or more, accounts with them?
• What guidance or policies do you need in place to prevent and manage this?