Ontario Needs to Embrace Government 2.0 Methodology

I just had a meeting with my representative from the CFIB , I am certain that without receiving information from them I would never have known about the requirement that the Ontario Ministry of Labour places on employers. Apparently, the Ministry has an additional 200 staff to enforce the requirement that all work places display the latest Employment Standards Poster. Now, the fines that they are issuing for not posting the latest version of the poster are not insignificant, so this certainly feels like a cash grab by the government. I think that the assumption is that if you are...

When Will We See OpenID.gc.ca ?

Just wanted to add that the Obama administration is reviewing OpenID for consideration within the .gov domain (readwrite.com also now using Drupal). David Eaves just wrote up a good appeal for OpenID in his post canadian governments: how to waste millions online ($30m and counting) . Looks like the USA government is now endorsing OpenID (note site now using Drupal) as a framework. I wanted to point folks to a GC OpenID (no longer available), a proof of concept project to bring OpenID to the Government of Canada. I first became aware of the movement behind the OpenID project back...

CLF 2.0 Branding, Training and Implementation

Last week Steve Lecomte and I met with Marquis Coté & Tamey McIntosh with digitalOttawa to talk about CLF 2.0 implementation/training and the launch of their new site commonlookandfeel.ca . It was good to hear about their vision for the site and where they hope to take the community. The site just launched this morning, and it is clear that they will be starting to add a lot of content to the site to help support a move towards compliance. We're looking forward to seeing where this initiative goes and finding ways to collaborate with others in the community. Steve...

LabourTech 2008: A Great Beginning

Well, I just got back from a whirlwind tour of Toronto. I had agreed to present at the LabourTech 2008 conference back in March, when Chris Lawson, CUPE 's Webmaster, asked me to participate. I was very impressed to see the turnout this weekend. There was quite a large turnout from Canada's Trade Union community. It is the first event of it's kind I know about and it was great to see this many people get out and discuss. I was part of a 3hr panel, the Open Source CMS Smackdown, which was a very friendly review of open source...

Databases, Government and Security

I had to write a short note about a concern that was passed along to me about having public facing websites having databases on them. The opinion passed along to me was that it was insecure to have a database driven dynamic website for a public government department because the database made the whole system less secure. I just needed to state clearly that it is the scripting languages that interact with the browser that are the main point of concern, and these are well used in most GoC sites. Yes, if the .asp or .php scripts that are driving...

Common Look and Feel Standards in a Drupal Theme

For those in the theming world, Common Look and Feel for the Internet 2.0 (aka CLF) is the source of many hours of CSS tinkering and artistic compromise but necessary if you want to make a Government of Canada compliant website The context of CLF is noble: Canadians have the right to obtain information and services from Government of Canada Web sites regardless of the technologies they use. The key to effective implementation of universal accessibility lies in designing sites to serve the widest possible audience and the broadest possible range of hardware and software platforms, from adaptive technologies to...

Validation Problems - Sorry! This document can not be checked

We use validators for our themes in order to produce standards compliant websites ( HTML , CSS , speed and accessibility ). We ran into this problem earlier in the week though with a theme we inherited from someone else. The error was that not all of the characters included in the file were UTF-8 , the new standard for international character sets. I believe that someone had just cut/paste the header values in from an old site and included them directly in the page.tpl.php file. This isn't unusual when upgrading a site, but certainly demonstrates the importance of validation...

Introducing Your Community to Your New Site

Drupal tries to make it as easy as possible for users to start participating in an online community. A lot of effort has been put into making the user registration process as simple as possible, however, given the nature of online spammers/hackers it is important to put in some controls to see that only the people you want to give access to are given rights on your site. So usually users will either see a text box on the sidebar, or click on a link which takes them to a registration page (full sized version of the one to the...

Upgrade to Ubercart and removal of Categories module

We decided to upgrade our websites from the ecommerce module to the new Ubercart 1.0 shopping cart. Ubercart ( http://www.ubercart.org ) simplified the order taking process and has a very customizable checkout, shipping and tax settings. We were even able to charge GST tax on shipping! The one page checkout is great and calculated the shipping on the fly as you enter your shipping address. It will even automatically create an account for you so you can view your order status or print an invoice (or download a file). As well, we decided to rid the site of the categories...

Small Business and Big Unions

Well, a year ago we decided to become a part of Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB). I was convinced that there would be more financial benefits to belonging to a large body of small businesses, and I think those have been proven correct. I also have called to get some support from them in the past and find the staff I've talked to be helpful and knowledgable. The regulations and paperwork are difficult to keep up with and I am glad that the CFIB has sent me material that has helped my business stay within health government guidelines. However,...