Reviewing an article dealing with arguments people and programmers are not confident about (Government), has been somehow a challange; not everyone knows what hindrances a developer has to face when programming components or modules for a Government web application. So, if on one hand it is possible to consider a knowledge factor, on the other both authors tried to climb over this obstacle, giving a wide spectrum view of what Gov on web is, and providing good data to developers and web masters about needs and requirements arising in government applications development. For these reasons, the main objective of this review is to evaluate whether or not the article is able to communicate (effectively) how far Government web solutions have evolved up until now, whether reader understands present problems and future trends for this particular field of Software Engineering.

1450: STARTING FROM THE OTTOMAN EMPIRESaying that the authors didn’t write a very interesting introduction would probably be a lie; I found very impressive the comparison made between the Ottoman Empire and the present age focusing on one particular social aspect: progress. A 50 year crisis (probably leading to the empire destruction) took place because of non compliance with new “social technologies”; transposing times, concepts, roles and actors, it is possible to reach a conclusion: if government web applications (the Ottoman Empire) do not migrate on Web 2.0 (Gutemberg’s press), something bad will happen in the next future (maybe a 50 year institutional chaos?).

Well, jokes and funny predictions aside, the authors sure made very good remarks, don’t they always say: “Historia magistra vitae est“? It is undoubted that all considerations about progress and technological growth are correct, but reader is led to think that everythink works on the principle stating that trends non compliance means extinction. This is not true.

Although all web sites today implement social components and try to be Web 2.0 compliant to “stay alive” (because an Internet user expectes to find these services and if he doesn’t he’ll leave the application), it doesn’t mean that Gov works this way. Government is a very particular field, strongly connected to society on a limited territory and exposing many links to various services (made for citizens). When an institution decides to move some services on the Internet without complying standards, the consequences of this action don’t always lead to a failure; there are evidences of this everywhere: a lot of websites providing data and features basing on the “conservatory approach“ described by Barrientos and Foughty still work. Why? Because government web sites expose services, used by citizens, that no one else could ever provide (even if it sounds strange, the reality is that we are considering a monopoly); so, in spite of the “conservatory approach”, a Web 2.0 non compliant government application will sure not be rejected by users (1). That’s the reason for what, even considering the correctness of the Ottoman Empire/present age comparison, I don’t agree the dangerous future consequences predicted by the authors (meaning

that a sufficient analysis on context was not properly performed). On the other hand, I completely agree with both authors when talking about the necessity to move Gov on Web 2.0, in order to provide better services and a better user integration with such distant entities like institutions are (2).

A NEW USER CENTERED APPROACHJumping now to present (a very big step from 1400), the situation is a conservative “methodology” used by institutions on the web for interacting with people. This aspect was explained very well by Barrientos and Foughty with a good solution: migrating from a Gov-centric model to a user-centric approach where citizens are equal contributors in gov web sites.

And while a good solution rises, many problems appear on the horizon (Murphy’s law can’t never be contradicted). The authors were clear in this point about the lack of guidelines, howtos, best practises that globally generate some kind of new world to explore. Of course, not everyone is willing to leave the main road for heading to an unknown path (note that “unknown” = “fear”), and here’s where the article defines its first milestone: hesitancy by Gov is understandable, but progress is at doors (do we want to end up like the Ottoman Empire?).

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WAndrea Tino, University of Catania

Article Review - Human Computer Interaction (AY: 2009/2010)

eb 2.0 in Gov

(1): For example, if the US Department of Driver Services decided to publish a web form for updating driving licences, even if the site weren’t web 2.0 compliant, users wouldn’t care; they would probably prefer a better service but they would use it anyway (instead of waiting in everlasting queues).

(2): Recently, seminars and events about citizens interactions with government have shown that people perceive their public services as distant with very low trust levels. To repair this situation, institutions are working for enstablishing a better connection with final users (gov as a person).

So, the point is always progress. Now and on, the article describes the factors for which it is important for Gov to migrate on Web 2.0 locating a large part of these reasons in one single aspect: inevitability. Here’s, to me, the great blank left by both authors.

Despite the article provides good questions about the reliability of users published content, the usefulness of Web 2.0 tools, the safety of the new transparency level and the collisions between Gov policies and Web 2.0 approaches, there is no mention about one giant problem that all gov web sites encounter when trying to migrate: the impossibility to follow other Govs’ example and experiences. I don’t know why the authors spent not a single word about this argument (and it is not true that it can be considered a self-evident truth by people and developers), but sure it’s the main hindrance for design and development teams. In fact, like an unilateral exponential random variable (3), a gov web application cannot be redesigned or reengineered using the same paths followed by other gov applications; the reason is simple and I’ve already introduced it before: a strict coupling exists between a gov application and the society, the territory and the laws connected to it; following the example of another gov application would be impossible given the great difference between cultures, laws and societies (even in those cases where some similarities can be considered, for example between two European countries). Why is this a great problem? Because it means that every inastitution has to choose its own path with no guideline at all, it’s like travelling alone in the desert without a map or a guide.

WEB 2.0 BENEFITSThere is, in the article, a three half column paragraph dedicated to opportunities and imperatives in the

world of Web 2.0. There is not much to say here but agreeing with everything said by the authors, especially when talking about real migration cases like the US Government’s Intelligence Community. The only one thing I’d like talking about is the social factor that renders Web 2.0 migration a required step for Gov. As expressed by Barrientos and Foughty, the present generation, especially young people and students, are accustomed to use social tools and user-centric applications; gov web sites should act the same way in order to maintain credibility (a very important aspect for institutions).

GOV WEB 2.0 DESIGN PROCESSTalking about Web 2.0 design processes and providing a scheme, sure is a good way to give a wide-range view about the problems that occour when engineering a gov web application complying present standards. But my opinion is that the authors left few space for this argument, a very important one in this article (especially when a developer reads it). What really misses is a general design scheme, while an agile-prototypal design/development process is provided. This is a problem because reader is lead to associate gov Web 2.0 applications development to the agile development paradigm;

this is not true. Agile methodologies are modern development guidelines recently turned into a development process, they can be applied to many fields: from web development to web services orchestration and implementation; but building a Web 2.0 compliant application doesn’t really mean using agile technics. In order to develop a good gov web application it is possible to use every design process available today: the Prototypal process, the Spiral scheme, the Component development, the RAD process, the Incremental model, the XP programming and so on; they all are valid choices.

What’s really different from a normal web application (when developing a gov web site) is that the chosen development/design model needs to be modified by adding a static element to it, this module is always the same and it is model-independent. It means that every web development team is free to choose the most suitable design process, only one thing is required: adding a little but significant part to the diagram. This little module is provided by the article and consists in a three part micro-diagram representing three different phases: the policy compliance check, the policy evaluation/modification (if possible) and the policy changes approval; in the end these three steps

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(3): Memorylessness or experiencelessness is the singularity owned by the exponential random variable. When an event is described by this kind of probability distribution, what happened in the past doesn’t affect the future. For instance, if waiting the

bus were described by this probability distribution and the average waiting time is ten minutes, if I asked someone: “When will the bus arrive?“ the poor one would answer me: “Ten minutes!“ even if he had already waited for eight minutes.

Pict-01: The diagram represents an expanded version of the gov development process shown in the article. Here we can see the indipendence by any design model.

Policy issuescheck

Policies evaluation

Issues found

No issues

Parent Model Step (n)

Parent Model Step (n+1)

Policies modi�cation?

Non compliance

Compliance

Policies modi�cation

Legalanalysis

Possible

Approval for policy changes

Not possible

No

Yes

distinguish a normal application from a gov application (this procedure is almost the same, independently by the development process).

GOV & LEGAL ISSUESLet us begin now a surface analysis about the problems occourring when development teams encounter, in the design process, the block I described before; in fact, it’s there that major difficulties arise. Time-spending legal analysis aside, the work of an entire development team is slowed down due to this little module that appears when we handle a gov application. So if a non-compliance is encountered because of a legal issue, the team must stop its work and wait for the legal commission to verify the possibility to change policies, and (in case of negative response) eventually regress to the previous step changing that feature (and this takes a lot of time other than being a very troublesome task). Although these aspects were described very well by the authors with good examples and real cases, I expected the article to take in exam some solutions adopted by institutions for solving these problems, instead of listing a series of difficulties which are an end unto themselves.

Is it because there are still no solutions? No, that’s the point. US Government has released on 23rd December 2008 a document (4) with several guidelines for institutions, in order to facilitate Web 2.0 migration; the strange thing is that, although this document is referenced by the article, there is no mention about its content (those parts regarding potential solutions for several common problems in the field of social media). But there’s more: on usa.gov there are many documents (5) available about Web 2.0, thanks to them it is possible to realize that the present global situation is not so bad: there are a lot of institutions (in the documents,

names and web links are shown) that have already reached a very good efficiency level implementing social channels, social forums, online content publishing technologies, content sharing features, online environments for remote offices and much more. From this point of view, the article, in the first part, makes readers understand that Web 2.0 is still a dark and unknown entity to Government. Keeping on reading, it is possible to find a brief description of some useful efforts made up until now by public companies and institutions, but the problem is always the same: it seems that we are still going through an embryonic stage when talking about Social Web, while things are different and we have achieved very good balance points.

SECURITY ISSUES .GOV MEANS LEGITIMATE INFOWhen moving to the security issues the intention of both authors is clear: underlining the risks caused by sensitive data leakage, highlighting the consequent need for limiting information disclosure and facilitating the comprehension of the main problems causing the slowing down of development processes. This topic is very important and, to me, it was described very well; it is imortant to understand why a gov web application cannot allow any wrong information to be published (because of the .gov domain) or sensitive data to get lost or leaked (because of the high importance level of the information).

MANAGING POLICIESAlthough it seems we have made great steps, we are still in the same point of two paragraphs before: stopped in that part of the design diagram representing the policies validation (illustrated by the picture Pict-01). Well this is sure a measure about how crucial this stage is. So the problem lays here: how to fasten this

tedious and extremely time-spending procedure? The authors tried to provide a solution availing themselves of the help provided by Rob Padilla (NASA Ames Research Center legal counsel). The result is very good: the article describes what problems occour when users post content on a normal community web site like Facebook and when content is posted on gov web sites, the responsability of information and data is different and wrong information may cause serious and dangerous consequences. In particular I whole agree with Padilla when he says that defining a specific goal allows the entire design and development process to be easier and faster, although an explaination of why this happens is not given. However the reason is simple: with specific goals in mind, it is possible to foresee what legal issues would ever be touched, so the design team and the legal commission are able to proceed separately and in parallel, shortening times and wasting less resources.

In the end, when talking about benefits of working through issues, Barrientos and Foughty discuss about the possibility to create precedents and usable experiences for future endeavors; I believe that this is not always true: in the limits I described before (when writing about the impossibility for institutions to use others’ example for designing gov Web 2.0 compliant applications), there are many conditions to meet in order to let this situation happen (for example, different applications operating in the same field may share their design experiences).

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(4): Social Media and the Federal Government: Perceived and Real Barriers and Potential Solutions, pdf available at www.usa.gov.

(5): Matrix of Web 2.0 Technology and Government (pdf at www.usa.gov). Examples of Agencies Using Online Content and Technology to Achieve Mission and Goals (pdf at www.usa.gov).

The .GOV domain name is a Sponsored Top Level Doman (sLTD) in the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet, representing all legitimate United States government institutions and sponsored by the General Services Administration (GSA: the company in charge of defyning the .gov compliance rules: www.dotgov.gov). To register a gov domain, an authorization must be submitted to the GSA (federal agencies need a cabinet-level Chief Information Officier to send authorizations), after receiving it, the internal commission at GSA checks all requirements, if no non-compliance factors are detected, the GSA grants a gov URL address to the requestor registering the new DNS.

.GO

V

“.gov means something... it means the information on the site is legitimate”

NO GUIDELINES AND DO NOT WAIT FOR THEM: A NEGATIVE SITUATION?Before jumping to DASHlink, there is one argument I’d like to talk about: it is an assertion by Rob Padilla about the uselessness of waiting for guidelines from higher institutions about web gov applications design process. I agree with this approach because, in a sofisticated system where institutions have to maintain a solid hierarchy, Web 2.0 directives are slow to be spread. There is another aspect to describe: the lack of guidelines or howtos to look at (like the authors said), makes it useless to refer to upper levels in order to get directions; as I pointed out before: every public company has to draw its personal path.

This doesn’t deny what written in the legal issues paragraph: although Gov is moving slowly to Web 2.0, this doesn’t represent a bad result if we consider the hostile land where institutions are moving onto. Even if surprising and not evident, the global situation is positive and this is the message that should be conveyed.

EXAMINING REAL CASES: DASHLINKThe article reserves a six column space for examining a real case represented by a gov website whose design was performed by the authors too: DASHlink (6).

I have to say, unfortunately, that almost two and half columns (more than 30% of the reserved space) are spent for a very verbose description of the website’s details, while there are some design aspects that could be trated (design process is described well, but it was possible, on my opinion, to provide more details). Notwithstanding the verbosity, DASHlink is sure a very good example to verify the complexity of design and development processes in Government applications.

In particular, there are some important topics discussed by Barrientos and Foughty: the domain choice and the posting policy.

Both authors explain that placing the site in the .gov domain exposed the intire project to high failure levels; althought no details were specified (maybe implied, but this is a mistake on my opinion), the primary cause is represented by legal issues compliance, in particular I’m referring to the posting policy. The article provides an important description about what problems occour when the development team interacts with the legal commission (in that crucial design phase represented by the little module described before); in this case (a real case study) it is remarkable the solution adopted in order to avoid the legal issues non-compliances: creating a dichotomy among users defining two different groups. The goal achieved is the possibility to consider a group of people non strictly connected with NASA; by doing so it is possible to give the responability of posted content validation to a class of known and reliable users (this is Social Web).

It is also important to remark that every single suggestion provided by Rob Padilla was applied in DASHlink design stages. This is a proof about the reliability of all information and data provided by the article. Furthermore, we can also notice another important thing: although no guidelines are available for designing gov Web 2.0 compliant applications, we have some sort of unorderd set of design principles (very generic directives, it’s always better than nothing).

CONCLUSIONS AND FINAL CONSIDERATIONSWell, here we are in the end. It is not simple to summarize such an all-ambracing article in few words. One thing is sure: there is a lot of material

ready to use, although it is not possible to talk about guidelines, we can always look at the approaches taken into consideration. Like the authors wrote: it is a matter of defining goals and achiving them by building a framework of Web 2.0 compliant services; I can’t do anything but agreeing with that: the experience provided by Rob Padilla was a very good case study able to show real problems and needs (giving also solutions and potential approaches for similiar difficulties).

In conclusion, referring to the main objective of this review (described in the first lines), I am allowed to state that Barrientos and Foughty were able to make readers understand what restraints Web 2.0 migration in gov applications.

Presently, the developers community has to deal always more and more with Government web sites; if we are able to explain well the most important aspects of design for this kind of applications, we’ll sure improve the quality of many products and facilitate the passage to Web 2.0.

Andrea Tino dorian@marcido.com

andry.tino@gmail.com

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(6): DASHlink web site is: dashlink.arc.nasa.gov

“.The Web we know, which loads into a browser window is essentially static screenfulls, is only an embyo of the Web to come... The Web will be understood not as screenfulls of text and graphics but as a transport mechanism, the ehter through which interactivity happens... It will appear on your computer screen, on your TV set, your car dashboard, your cell phone... maybe on your microwave oven.” (7)

(7): The term Web 2.0 was coined by Darcy DiNucci in her article: “Fragmented Future“.