When Gov tries to get StreetWise
You may have spotted garish advertising posters about town or heard adverts on stations such as Planet Rock promoting the latest government online safety initiative, the £4m Cyber Streetwise project which aims to change the way people view online safety.
The authors of Cyber Streetwise say the project aims to provide SMEs with impartial advice and tips about how to make some simple but effective changes to improve their online security. The money is being spent on an advertising campaign, a website and a booklet.
In 2013 the UK government machine was trying to harmonise its sites under a common portal with a common look and feel of the dot gov dot uk domain. The government-funded StreetWise project goes out of its way to avoid conformance, using a dot com domain and a cartoon style which should certainly appeal to the eight-year old's in the household. Looking at the site, it feels like it is trying to look cool and trendy and "yoof", with cutesy gimmicks such as a red London bus which trundles across the screen from time to time, but its trying to present a serious security message to both home and business.
The site is painfully slow and I was less than impressed by its accessibility and usability. It is written entirely in javascript so if you don't have javascript enabled, either because you are using an accessibility aid or a voice browser, or you've blocked gratuitous third party scripting for good security reasons, all you will get is a blank screen. If your screen isn't set to a high enough resolution then there are areas where the content conceals the menus. Try to use an accessibility aid to enlarge the text or resize your window and the layout changes completely. Even if you avoid those problems, the interface is, at best, obscure, requires you to mouse over the screen trying to discover what is clickable, uses strange terminology such as "Next Building", and the back button doesn't do at all what you'd expect when you are in the middle of the site.
As for the content of the site, it does little more than regurgitate the usual well-worn advice such as use a cryptic password, use anti-virus software, check for a key symbol in the browser when you bank online, don't open attachments in emails from strangers. None of this is new, far from it. Do you really think anyone is going to read this website and say "Gosh, computers get viruses and this cool website with street cred says I should install anti-virus software on all my devices to prevent infection,... I'd better do that right now."
In the unlikely event that anyone reacts this way, they will next be puzzled by the poorly-punctuated advice which says "Get Safe Online provides an in depth guide if you'd like more information find a link at the back of this brochure". Brochure? Yes, that's what the website says.
When you enter the site, the opening screen demands to know if you are a home or business user, and, when it was first launched, said that "By continuing to use this website you accept the use of cookies as per our privacy policy", but no indication was given of what the privacy policy was that you were agreeing to. That glaring omission has since been fixed by the addition of a link to a privacy policy written by the lawyers, but as usual this is just pure bureaucratic mindset. Anyone who needs to use this site isn't going to read, let alone understand, the privacy policy, and a site which is no more than a public information brochure has no business demanding you accept a privacy policy before reading it anyway.
Four million pounds may be loose change as far as the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is concerned but is this really the best they could do when spending our money?
28th January 2014
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.