Analyst: USASpending.gov needs serious improvements

The Obama Administration has rolled out a variety of Web sites since taking office, but not everyone has been happy with them.

One blogger is even calling USAspending.gov a 'travesty'.

That is according to Seth Grimes, President and Principle Consultant with Alta Plana Corporation, who told the Daily Debrief that he was shocked when he first visited the site.

"The first thing that struck me when I opened up the page was that the pie chart that appeared there was out of proportion. The sizes of the different segments in the pie chart were not in correspondence to the numbers that were displayed that were clearly labeled."

Grimes wrote about this on his blog on July 31.

He then waited about a month and returned to the site, only to find that not much had changed.

"I was struck, again, that the bad graphic there hadn't changed. In fact, it had gotten worse. No longer was it only the case that the pie chart segments were out of proportion to the percentages that were displayed, the colors in the pie chart simply didn't match the labels in the legend attached to the pie chart."

Grimes said he observed that someone had created the pie chart twice, used the chart from one attempt and the legend from the other.

"It was really sloppy work. I was just a casual visitor to the site. I just really have to wonder about what kind of QA work was done there was done there, whether the managers even look at their site. Graphics are supposed to jump out at you and catch your attention. This one did -- it caught my attention immediately."

The main problem was that, since the charts weren't clear, he had additional questions about the validity of the data and overall work that went into making the site.

"I looked at that graphic and said, 'This can't be right' -- so then I thought, 'I wonder what else is wrong'. Now, as I said, I do have a fair amount of experience working with federal government and other governmental statistical systems, including data dissemination on the Web, so I'm pretty familiar with the government's requirements."

Those requirements include complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1973.

Grimes said, not only was some of the data on USAspending.gov wrong, some of their tables failed to comply with Section 508.

"[It] requires, among other things, that data tables must have each individual cell clearly labeled as to the information it contains -- call it metadata, if you want. In other words, a table has a column and a row and the individual cells must either be identifiable via annotations applied to the column and row headers, or via annotations within the html coding that apply to the individual cells."

Grimes said his extensive experience designing pages for government customers made it easy for him to realize that USAspending.gov was not Section 508 compliant.

"I found that the problem was systematic throughout the site. . . . I [also] have gone back to the dashboard and have found that the problems with the non-annotation -- the non-compliance with Section 508's accessibility requirements -- still occurs systematically on the IT Spending Dashboard site."

Grimes said he was so surprised by the failings of USAspending.gov because it is understood throughout much of the Web design community that certain principles should be adhered to no matter what.

"You can understand that even if someone's not using a reading assistance device to look at a Web site, well, that person might be colorblind. The site uses colors extensively in its graphics. There's a principle that says you can find other ways to deliver the information. For instance, using cross hatching of various types in a graphic. The site doesn't provide that kind of visual assistance."

In addition, Grimes found that it was very hard to provide feedback once he discovered these problems. This was not as easy as advertised by the site.

"For instance, within the IT Dashboard, federal CIO Vivek Kundra has a blog there, but the comments are not enabled. . . . There's a feedback form on the site, which I used to report what I had found and I didn't get any response in what I considered a reasonable amount of time. Eventually, I did get a response -- one thanking me for pointing out the graphics proportion issues -- and I saw that . . . [this] has been corrected, but I didn't receive any automated acknowledgement -- the kind of thing I would expect from just about any major company that I would be dealing with to the comment I sent in."

There were also problems with the wiki set up on the site, as well as the email list.

Grimes said he joined the list, and is still waiting for his subscription request to be approved.

"In other words, they have certain mechanisms for interactivity and communications and community but they're simply not using them."

Overall, he said he was disappointed with his experience, mainly because the federal government is required by law to report certain information.

"The reason these sites exist is not because President Obama has a spirit of openness. The reason these sites exist is because of Congressional laws that were passed prior to the Obama Administration. The Obama Administration has done a nice job of getting this information out on the Web in a usable form quickly in response to these mandates, but these are mandates. . . . If this were a private company and you did something like this kind of sloppy programming, maybe you'd get yelled at by the CIO. You wouldn't be, effectively, violating some kind of federal law. This is a government site, it's not a commercial site."

Grimes reiterated that he feels the site's design has failed, not the overall effort. That being said, however, there is no excuse for shoddy work.

"[Doing something] correctly is very important here when you're dealing with government data because the government is seen as an authority here. People look to this data for all kinds of decisions in their everyday lives and companies are going to use the IT Spending site, in particular, for strategic decisions. The Obama Administration has acted quickly to get sites like this up, but that's no reason to lower expectations of accuracy and quality."

---
On the Web:

Intelligent Enterprise -- Serious Design Failure at USAspending.gov

Alta Plana -- Web site

USAspending.gov -- Web site

(Copyright 2009 by FederalNewsRadio.com. All Rights Reserved.)