Copacetic

I love EI and both the development advisors I have had have been super, BUT, the web site still sucks. It has always sucked. Why does it suck? Because instead of being organised around customers needs (i.e. the Irish Entrepreneur) it is organised around EI’s needs to publish information on web.

So ten tips for EI to make its web site better,

1. Make it Social: Give you HPSUs a login and create a social network around startups in Ireland. Only you know about all of us. Better still start something on Ning or Facebook or Google Groups
2. Add a Blog: Add an Blog and RSS feed for breaking news that way everybody gets the news rather than the select few who make it through the venn diagram nightmare of EI mailing lists
3. Give Me The Money: We want your advice for sure, but first we want your money Rapid front page “give me the money links” would take visitors right to the core of the matter, CORD, Innovation Vouchers, RTI, Equity Investment, Seed Capital and BES
4. Search more than your Site: Put up a decent search engine that links all the relevant resources. Here’s one I made in ten minutes, Government Websites for Irish Entrepreneurs
5. Automated Mailing Lists: Using a mailing list manager so when I register interest I can also unregister interest without requiring some manual step to remove me from the list. And, wait for it, let me choose what I’m interested in
6. Show us the World: EI has fantastic resources overseas lets seem them on the web site, how do we engage with these people, what can they do for us?
7. Share the Success: EI runs great events all over the world, lets hear about them online
8. IE is not the only browser: Make it look right in Firefox, this is not rocket science lads. 90% of your visiting customers are using Firefox and the rest are using Safari
9. Word is a proprietary format: Stop publishing documents in MS Word. There are far better and more palatable alternatives including OpenOffice, PDF, HTML etc. etc. How long before somebody publishes a new document in Office 2007 and all us poor saps with Office 2003 get screwed?
10. Pick One: Pick any one of these and run with it, then ignore the rest for now

How would you improve the Enterprise Ireland web site?

BTW: All this goes double for the Irish Software Association Web site!

From the Special Report on eGovernment,

“In 2002, the Government set a target of having all public services capable of on-line delivery made available by 2005.  This was clearly unrealistic”

Right lads, I know what to say at my next EI audit review.

There’s more,

The Public Services Broker was planned as a single website which would facilitate data sharing between public service providers and link together all the public services associated with significant events for members of the public, such as the death of a relative or setting up a business.  The aim was to make it easier for members of the public to find and use services.  No budget or timetable was set for the Broker project when it got initial Government approval in May 2000.

The Broker concept was innovative and ambitious.  Its feasibility, however, was not examined early on and planning was weak.  A review of the project in 2002 led to a scaling back of the proposal.  In May 2003, a less ambitious project was approved with estimated development costs of €14 million.  This project was due for completion in August 2004 but was not completed until December 2005 at a cost of €37 million.  Annual running costs for the Broker are in the region of €14 - €15 million.

37 million? For a project that essentially failed to deliver. With 14-15m annual running costs. Can you say return on invesment?

Hands up here any software startup that would be happy to share in that 37m in chunks of less than 100,000? Who would leap at a chance to implement a Government system at cost just for the experience and referenability.

The Irish government needs to scale down the size of its IT ambitions untils it learns how to manage them properly.