- They don't follow the rules - they spent years telling everyone how they should design their webpages, then when it became an official standard, they were the first ones to do whatever they felt like and ignore the standard. They spent years telling everyone to be P3P compliant, and now they aren't.
- They're difficult to work with - they talk down to state employees, they don't manage projects well, they lie about deliverables and fees, and they generally act like whatever they think is what you should think.
- They think they're the experts in everything - as if no one else in government has ever done anything. If you show them research or documentation that contradicts what they think, then you're a liar or the experts are wrong.
- They take the credit for everything - they take credit for every online service ever created by Virginia government, even though they have only been involved in a sall fraction of them. They think if they link to it, they own it.
- They're more concerned about making money that helping - they charge what they feel like it when they feel like it, ignoring market averages or common sense. It's like they charge whatever they were short in their budget,and we're supposed to shut up and pay.
- The home page is really ugly - pretty obvious.
- They charge too much then don't deliver - I know people who have had projects dropped because Virginia.gov wasn't making enough money off of them. I'm seen then charge as much as 500% more than the market rate for hosting and design services.
- They're jerks - summary of above.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Why Everyone I Know Hates Virginia.gov
I have a part time job in government IT, and one thing that everyone seems to complain about all the time is the state web page at www.virginia.gov. I thought I would quickly list the top reasons everyone hates them. Shadow, feel free to add to the list.
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4 comments:
I can comment on some of it, based on similar conversations. Maybe Big Kahuna can also add some light..?
In recent years they have really started to tumble. Take a look at their web policy page and actually read it. A lot of it looks like it was pieced together from other state sites, and a lot of it doesn't even make sense. For example, they say they won't collect any personal information without permission, then they go and describe the personal information they collect anyway. They promote a standard, then ignore it for their own site.
What can you expect, though? Although they act like bigshots and experts, if you look at their credentials, they aren't that impressive. They have marketers with no marketing training, project managers with no certification, designers fresh out of college, and managers with no business training. They pull people from other states to try and run our state. They have no business being in the business they are in.
I try not to get involved in mud slinging with my former alma mater, except when they really piss me off. ;)
But I do want to say that Virginia Interactive and Virginia.gov have some good people. I haven't always seen eye-to-eye with management, and I don't know anyone hired after I left, but I have the utmost respect for the programmers, designers, and PMs there that I knew.
Does Virginia.gov ie Virginia Interactive still make $1 per record accessed by insurance companies through the DMV application? Cutting off this funding will solve the problem immediately. The Commonwealth of Virginia should not be funding this organization.
It's somewhere between $1 to $2. It would be nice if they had to work for their money like the rest of us, instead of having it just land in their laps because businesses want something that DMV owns. Might make them a bit more customer-centric.
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