irlgov.ie Audit

— Published November 21st, 2005  |  by David Moore

The omission is the site at irlgov.ie, which bills itself grandly as “the Government of Ireland website”.

The site itself is largely a set of links to other government sites, with some photographs and background information about the country thrown in.

What’s its purpose?

And this is why the site was not included in our original audit – there’s very little here. The idea of a central site for the whole of the Irish government sounds good, but with Oasis, Basis and Reach Services all offering other (more useful) versions of this approach, it’s hard to see who the audiences for irlgov.ie might be, or what objectives the site has.

And this lack of clarity shows in its audit scores – it does some things well, but seems to be lacking focus and a clear purpose.

Firstly, it’s not clear who’s responsible for the site. There’s no About information, no contact details of any sort, and only the most basic feedback form.

This Marie Celeste feel continues with the badges on the homepage, where there’s still a link to Ireland’s presidency of the EU last year. The links to department and agency websites also need updating (for example the Irish tourism site’s URL has changed).

The usual suspects

The design, user orientation and accessibility of the site all need work, presenting a negative image.

Usability is also an issue – the What’s New section doesn’t actually give you any news, for example. Instead, you’re given a search box and effectively told to go fish.

All of which is a shame, as there are some positive elements to the site. The same search that controls the What’s New section offers a number of valuable options for filtering and combining the latest material from a range of public sector sites.

This is a powerful but underplayed feature, and its implementation is suspect. A search for site updates across government in the last day returned pages dated 2009. Being forward-thinking is impressive, but this is a little confusing.

Finding departments or agencies, however, is relatively straightforward, with simple categorisation and a comprehensive topic listing.

In a nutshell

So a good search and a solid basic structure (browse by organisation, or by information type) is let down by a lack of relevance, some design problems and an overall feeling of neglect. In any rebuilding project, a clear purpose would need to be established to base the site around.

Scores:

• Content: 40%

• Functionality: 40%

• Design: 33%

• Total: 38%

• Weighted Total: 38%