Inside Politics

Parliamentary website video upgrade leaves non-IE users behind

As reported by Canadian Press over the weekend, the parliamentary website has taken its first cautious steps towards compliance with 21st century internet standards by incorporating video and social media elements into the electronic Hansard. 

IE-view.jpg
Alas, it appears that the "View this Video" option is only available under Internet Explorer, which means that those of us who use other browsers have to install an IE-capable extension like IETab, which is available for both Firefox and Chrome -- in order to be able to take advantage of the new feature, which allows a user to jump directly to a particular point in a video. 

(Note: IETab works on Windows only -- sorry about that, Mac/Linux users. If you find a workaround, let me know on twitter or in the comments, and I'll post an update.)

As for the other enhancements - share buttons for twitter and Facebook, quick access to voting records, XLM access and RSS-based "activity feeds" for MPs) -- although it's encouraging to see parl.gc.ca if not exactly embrace, at least acknowledge the interactive possibilities of today's web technologies, as a power user (read: procedural geek) I'd like to see as much time and energy put into improving the user-friendliness of the existing site -- not with popup video, but by making the information itself more accessible. 

At the top of my wishlist:

  • RSS feeds for all committees -- notices, minutes and transcripts -- as well as daily publications like Hansard, Journals and the Order and Notice Paper
  • scanned copies (or, better still, plaintext versions) of all responses to Written Questions
  • searchable pre-1994 Hansard, committee transcripts and all other parliamentary records that can be scanned, OCR'd and posted online
Anyone else? Share your most-hoped-for upgrades in the comments or on twitter.






Tags: blackberry jungle, House of Commons IT, parl.gc.ca, the future is now (if you use IE)