Credit: Zsuzsanna Kilián (nkzs on stock.xchng)
When I posted last week about getting government publications online, I had forgotten something key: according to the Government of Canada’s Communications Policy, departments and agencies are required to “maintain a publicly accessible index” of their publications. (If you want the reference, it’s the first item in the list under requirement 27 — sorry that’s not a very good link for it, you’ll have to scroll and scroll to get to it.)
This dovetails nicely with obtaining publications being one of the main reasons that visitors come to federal government websites.
So making a prominent “publications” link that leads to a robust catalogue can serve to kill two birds with one stone — not only are you meeting customer demand, but you can also tell your bosses that you are meeting policy obligations. They should like that very much.
BTW, I do plan on posting up a more fulsome piece on how this might look in an ideal world — stay tuned.
What's a spaghetti test?
