THE Government's Web site has just undergone a spring clean after almost a year online. Still at that same awful Web address, now the interface is "frames-biased" - which means most users can't download or bookmark individual pages apart from the main menu.
The revamped design is a post modern dog's dinner, mixing last year's navigational icons with a new set, and a mishmash of backgrounds - some are the old harvest yellow, others (for no apparent reason) are dull default greys. And the frustrating feature of extra, redundant pages between the link you click and the - "final" Web page you want is still there.
The three main options include a section for the Garda (not online yet) and the office of the President. Besides last week's official "goodbye" statement, it has potted biogs of past Presidents, a history of the Aras and a tour of its main rooms.
Then there are the individual Government Departments. The info ranges from a growing mound of Ministerial press releases to over 90 tables of general and agricultural statistics (in a handy Excel spreadsheet format, thanks to the Department of Agriculture) and the 1997 Budget speech.
All very useful, but there still are no daily Dail/Senate debates, and the policy about digital versions of other documents is very inconsistent. The Department of Defence gives chapters and "executive summaries" from its publications, while Michael D. Higgins's Department just lists where to get the books. And when Ministers mention that documents are online or tell us their email addresses, often the information isn't a "hot link".
The Web is about making links, but the pages tend to fragment government into departments with no overlap. For example, the Department of Agriculture's pages about agri-tourism have no links to Bord Failte.
The search engine is still bizarre too, suffering from a bout of election madness. Search for documents with the word "abortion" in them, and you get "Provisions Relating To Petroleum Taxation"!