Job Centre Website doesn't work properly

[sega]

http://www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk/cms.asp ... rchforajob

The box in number 1 should have a list of job titles but in Mozilla it doesn't show up (I tried it with IE6 aswell & still didn't work) but on another computer with IE6 it worked fine.
And clicking the green Continue button at the bottom doesn't do anything.

What could be the cause of this? ActiveX ? MS Java ? I have both of them disabled. I do have Sun Java installed.

[y3k]

confirmed, thats weird, bad coding maybe?
www.totaljobs.com and www.jobs.co.uk are pretty good

[therube]

My very limited knowledge (?) of webpages tells me Java.

encoding="iso-8859-1"

[DJGM]

I too have noticed these problems with the JobCentre Plus website myself. This issue
could well be one that's worth raising a tech evangelism bug report over at BugZilla.

I emailed the site with my comments, and they replied with the usual bog standard
comment to the effect of "Most people use MSIE, so that's what we mainly support"

My email and their reply are on my other computer. I'll post them here later.

Meanwhile, might I suggest the Worktrain website, if you're looking for a job. It uses
the same jobs database as the JobCentre Plus website, as it is also run by the same
section of government, The Department for Work and Pensions, or The DWP, and
from what I can see, it all works fine in Mozilla, with no apparent problems.

[sega]

I e-mailed them too but I never got a reply.
I guess they're too lazy to fix it so I'll have to make use of some of the other websites you guys posted.
Thanks.

[LayZ]

Already known about, read the bugzilla comments about this: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=231353

The fix is easy, but they're unwilling to listen.

Someone on the Edinburgh Linux user group mailing list even offered to fix it for them and no reply to that offer, people who can fix this are sitting around frustrated claiming the dole* while people who do such a poor job are employed as web designers!

Funnily enough the site used to work in Mozilla just fine - it was just after they 'improved' it. Please, if you're from the UK and unemployed (I'm not at the moment fortunately) please write to your jobcentre manager - emailing the central office just gets a standard reply, perhaps if they got complaints from their local managers too they'd fix it.

Just another example of typical government incompetence. Perhaps it's worth writing to your MP as the jobcentre is a government organisation, if your MP is Labour then they may pass on your concerns, if they're not Labour then they can use it in their campaign against them.

* For those not in the UK the dole is the name of a benefit officially called jobseekers allowance. The amount of benefit given out is not as much as some would like you to believe

[LayZ]

Typical government waste:

In order to progress this I have commissioned our IT partner to investigate
the associated costs and timescales involved in updating the job search
facility to ensure its compatibility with a wider variety of
browsers/platforms. Upon receipt of this feasibility study, I will then be
able to make a decision how best to progress the issue. As this work will
ultimately be funded by the taxpayer, I will of course be required to assess
the report on the basis of Value For Money investment.

This could be fixed within 5 minutes by anyone with a clue in webdesign, I mentioned before someone even sent an email offering to fix this, but the government instead have to launch an investigation to see how much it'll cost to fix it.

Reminds me of a certain bank that won't even do a one minute fix that'd help all non-IE users and wouldn't not affect IE in any way. But that rant is for another day.

[DJGM]

. . . but the government instead have to launch an
investigation to see how much it'll cost to fix it . . .

One has to wonder how much that "investigation" is going to cost . . .

From the "official" reply . . .

I would like to take this opportunity to assure you that other
than this the entire website fully complies with the standards
for Government websites set by the Office of the e-Envoy.

Somehow, I don't feel assured. IMHO, the aforementioned "standards" that we're told
the website complies to don't mean jack! The only standards, that websites should
comply with (especially sites such as JobCentre Plus) are those set by the W3C.


(BTW . . . Shouldn't this thread be in Web Development and Standards Evangelism?)

[y3k]

Someone on the Edinburgh Linux user group mailing list even offered to fix it for them and no reply to that offer, people who can fix this are sitting around frustrated claiming the dole* while people who do such a poor job are employed as web designers!

damn i love irony, so true, so true

Shouldn't this thread be in Web Development and Standards Evangelism?

yes

[gerryg]

Typical government waste:

As this work will ultimately be funded by the taxpayer, I will of course be required to assess the report on the basis of Value For Money investment.

The Treasury Green Book requires the total costs and benefits of something to be assessed. It can sound a little complicated, but essentially everything has to be accounted for: requiring someone to pay "this much" to gain access to e-government services, rather than only "that much" then this calculation needs to be included. (And of course other social impacts can be costed in, such as the additional costs of using insecure software (specifically MSIE) requiring further purchases of anti-virus products and exposure to unpleasant pop-ups etc.)

A Regulatory Impact Assessment (see Cabinet Office website), requires similar considerations, but relates to the policy decision to do it like this rather than like that

The reference to value for money is something much smaller - specifically to internal processes - see the Office of the Government Commerce definitions - and relates to th way one did something - "having chosen to do it like this, it was done as efficiently as possible"

I didn't understand the comment paraphrased as "but for this bit we were compliant" it contains its own denouncement

[DJGM]

Shouldn't this thread be in Web Development and Standards Evangelism?

yes

Well, are none of the mods going to bother moving it to the relevant forum then . . . ?