User Research of a Voting Machine: Preliminary Findings and Experiences    

This paper describes a usability study of the Nedap voting machine in the Netherlands. On the day of the national elections, 566 voters participated in our study immediately after having cast their real vote. The research focused on the correspondence between voter intents and voting results, distinguishing between usability (correspondence between voter intents and voter input) and machine reliability (correspondence between voter input and machine output). For the sake of comparison, participants also cast their votes using a paper ballot.

de Jong, Menno D.T., Joris van Hoof and Jordy Gosselt. Journal of Usability Studies (2007). Articles>Usability>Government>Netherlands

Using Scenarios for the Evaluation of Municipal Web Sites  

It appears to be difficult for experts to predict the problems users of documents and websites experience. Realistic usage scenarios may help experts to achieve better prediction rates, since they focus the experts' attention explicitly on the users and their use situations. We developed a set of scenarios for evaluating municipal websites, and used them to evaluate 15 websites. In this paper, we will describe the scenario evaluation method, and the feedback it helps to provide. The results suggest that a scenario-based evaluation method may be a fruitful way of enhancing experts' sensitivity for detecting user problems. open, except for the instruction to concentrate on potential reader problems.

de Jong, Menno D.T. and Leo R. Lentz. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Web Design>Assessment>Government

Voting and Usability Projects: How You can Participate

The UPA Voting and Usability project works to create a better elections process by improving the usability of ballots and voting systems.

Scott, Josephine. Usability Professionals Association (2004). Articles>Usability>Government>Civic

Working to Improve the Civic Experience

What has UPA done to encourage more useable and accessible government? Quite a lot, it turns out. UPA supports efforts to improve the usability of elections, support plain language, and remove barriers to civic access for people with disabilities through an alphabet soup of projects and events.

Scott, Josephine. Usability Professionals Association (2008). Articles>Usability>Accessibility>Government

Working with Government Documentation Standards: A Case Study  

This paper discusses the software development process at a particular government agency, the documentation standards used by that agency, the problems caused by these standards, and some of the solutions that have helped the technical communication there to work through the problems and still create documents of use to the reader.

Chiricosta, Tracey C. and Irene Lea Taylor. STC Proceedings (1993). Presentations>Documentation>Style Guides>Government

Writing Public Policy: A Practicum      

Practical experience teaches the difficulty and the messiness of democratic public policy processes. A discourse analytic perspective on rhetorical action in the institutional settings of policy work reveals the dynamics of effective agency. By simulating practical experience and by developing a discourse analytic perspective, academic instruction in professional and technical communication can show students what elected officials, governmental staff, and non-profit non-governmental organizations (NGOs) do to make or to implement policy.

Smith, Catherine F. Technical Communication Quarterly (2000). Articles>Writing>Policies and Procedures>Government

Serving Citizens’ Needs: Minimising Online Hurdles to Accessing Government Information  

With the rapid spread of the Internet across society, government institutions are taking advantage of digital technology to distribute materials to citizens. Is merely having a website enough, or are there certain usability considerations site creators must keep in mind to assure efficient public access to online materials? This project looked at typical people's ability to locate various types of content online, in particular, their ability to find tax forms on the web. Findings suggest that people look for content in a myriad of ways, and there is considerable variance in how long people take to complete this online task. Users are often confused by the ways in which content is presented to them. In this paper, two common sources of confusion in users' online experiences with locating tax forms online are distinguished: (1) URL confusion and (2) page design layout. Ways are also suggested to decrease these two sources of frustration, yielding less exasperating and more productive user experiences.

Hargittai, Eszter. Human Factors International (2003). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Government

This is How the Web Gets Regulated

As in finance, so on the web: self-regulation has failed. Nearly ten years after specifications first required it, video captioning can barely be said to exist on the web. The big players, while swollen with self-congratulation, are technically incompetent, and nobody else is even trying. So what will it take to support the human and legal rights of hearing impaired web users? It just might take the law, says Joe Clark.

Clark, Joe. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Government

Enterprise XML in Government Regulatory and Legislative Agencies

This presentation is based on a deployed enterprise system designed and integrated to support over 250 plus users for a west coast legislature. The system includes legislative authoring, legislative processing (Introducing, Amending, Enrolling, and Chaptering Bills), document publishing, and updating the State laws.

Vergottini, Grant. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Content Management>Government>XML

The Impact of XML on the Processes and Efficiencies of the Federal Government

The focus of this paper and the presentation will be to discuss how XML has changed and improved the legislative and regulatory document creation and management processes for agencies of the federal government. During the presentation, we will briefly describe the evolution of XML adaptation in the Legislative Branch agencies. A more in depth discussion can be found at xml.house.gov.

Schulke, Edward. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Information Design>Government>XML

Efficient XML Encoding Town Hall

Binary XML has been a controversial and hotly debated topic in the XML community for many years. The XML 1.x syntax is very flexible and provides a common information representation for a vast array of systems. The XML marketplace has generated a seemingly endless collection of low cost, high quality, rapidly evolving technologies that make creating, sharing, manipulating, securing and accessing information easier. Systems that have adopted XML are cashing in on the economic and interoperability benefits of the XML marketplace. Some believe the introduction of a second, more efficient encoding for XML information would drastically reduce or destroy the flexibility or interoperability benefits of XML.

Rollman, Rich and John Schneider. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Information Design>Government>XML

XML on the Desktop: Enabling eGovernment Services World Wide

This session will provide base line information on how native XML customer-defined schema support in Office applications is enabling XML based eGovernment interests from Europe, Asia, South and North America. Concrete and deployed examples will be shared to spark a new but real perspective on leveraging popular and user-friendly desktop applications to become, via XML and Web Services, the front-end to Government back-end systems. In short, real and effective solutions to enabling eGov Services in Government to Citizens, Government to Businesses and Government to Government scenarios.

Ruff, Lisa. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Information Design>Government>XML

Towards Seamless Knowledge: Integrating Public Sector Portals

The more connected our computer systems become, the more we realise how *disconnected* our information really is. Disconnectedness is not new; it is simply far more apparent nowadays: so much so that it underpins a renewed quest for ways to integrate information - and knowledge. One aspect of this is the focus on information integration within large organizations. Another is the spread of portals whose task is not so much to provide information directly as to provide consolidated, indirect access to information that resides elsewhere. In the public sector, in particular, portals have sprung up like mushrooms over the last 3-4 years.

Pepper, Steve. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Web Design>Government>Semantic

Preparing and Publishing Legislation using XML

Many governments are moving to using XML for drafting and publishing legislation. SAIC has worked with a number of jurisdictions to facilitate the automation of legislative drafting and publication processes using XML.

Arnold-Moore, Timothy. XML 2006 (2006). Articles>Legal>Government>XML

Police Reform, Task Force Rhetoric, and Traces of Dissent: Rethinking Consensus-as-Outcome in Collaborative Writing Situations    

Pedagogical and scholarly representations of collaborative writing and knowledge construction in technical communication have traditionally recognized consensus as the logical outcome of collaborative work, even as scholars and teachers have acknowledged the value of conflict and "dissensus" in the process of collaborative knowledge building. However, the conflict-laden work product of a Denver task force charged with recommending changes to the city police department's use-of-force policy and proposing a process for police oversight retains the collaborative group's dissensus and in doing so, illustrates an alternative method of collaborative reporting that challenges convention. Such an approach demonstrates a dissensus-based method of reporting that has the potential to open new rhetorical spaces for collaborative stakeholders by gainfully extending collaborative conversations and creating new opportunities for ethos development, thus offering scholars, teachers, and practitioners a way of reimagining the trajectory and outcome of collaborative work.

Knievel, Michael. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2008). Articles>Collaboration>Policies and Procedures>Government

The Public Presentation of a Hybrid Science: Scientific and Technical Communication in "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government" (2002)    

A recent British national intelligence-based Assessment (2002) illustrates how one government agency communicated science to serve its policy goals. This article analyzes some of the values that drive science, public policy, and national intelligence, and traces how those values affected the Assessment writers' goals and communication strategies. Through close reading of the Assessment's foreword and first section, this study shows how the writers shaped scientific and technical information to satisfy their disciplines' values and to naturalize their "proper perspective" on the policy case. Further analysis of similar documents will extend current research on scientific rhetoric, multidisciplinary collaborative writing, and public communication.

McKenzie, Keisha. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2009). Articles>Scientific Communication>Government>Case Studies

Understanding Public Policy Development as a Technological Process    

This article discusses public policy writing as a genre of technical communication and, specifically, public policy development as a technological process. It cites DeGregori’s theory of technology to demonstrate the shared invention processes of technology and public policy, the work of public policy scholars to describe the policy-development process, and the work of human—computer interaction scholars to identify cognitive models of public policy development as a technological process. The article concludes with a discussion of e-rulemaking Web sites and the role of technical communicators in creating these blended spaces.

Williams, Miriam F. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2009). Articles>Technology>Policies and Procedures>Government

Did Technical Documentation Play a Role in the White House's Decision to Move to Drupal?

The reasons for the White House's decision to run its Web site, whitehouse.gov, on the open source content management system Drupal are being discussed on various Web sites. Alongside Drupal's functionality, flexibility and openness, some are suggesting that Drupal's documentation was also a key factor for deciding to use this system.

Pratt, Ellis. Cherryleaf (2009). Articles>Documentation>Content Management>Government