The Office of the E-Envoy has published a 56 page document, Quality Framework for UK Government Website Design: Usability issues for government websites.
Speaking of the Aussie brain drain. Here's a sign of US-Austalian relations. Rat-brained robot does distant art, Perth robot, Atlanta brain.
And here's something completely unrelated unless you consider both to be examples of dodgy capitalism in action. US Department of Defence programme to allow traders to bet on future terrorist activity. Get in quick, the offer is limited to the first 1000 bloodsuckers.
Australia lags behind the UK when it comes to government use of open source but there is movement at the station. News Limited reports that the Democrats have been asking embarassing questions in Parliament in an attempt to prepare the ground for legislation that mandates open source software.
"Bill Gates is the richest man in the world and we're making a hefty contribution"
NEWS.com.au | Democrats target Microsoft (July 22, 2003)
My mission to spend less and less time in front of a keyboard and screen is progressing well. My eyes feel better. Coffee intake is down. I might even manage to get my new band off the ground this year at this rate.
One problem however is remembering how to do command-line stuff, especially when needing to fiddle and tweak systems in a hurry. My days as a UNIX sysadmin are long gone but perhaps unfortunately I am still using the gear. Maybe I should relegate myself back to "naive user" mode before something goes wrong. This kind of scenario is what I am dreading -
GNU/Linux Considered Harmful?.