Mike Pulsifer Photography mike-pulsifer.org

United States

After looking at USA’s Drupal powered Whitehouse website, their actual government website is a huge letdown, it uses dated HTML and awful header graphics.

Having seen the gallery of government web sites from around the world (link above), I must agree. The offerings from the United States are pretty poor. My impression from working in this sewer of intellectualism and integrity called Washington, DC for 13 years is that I seriously doubt ANY of the government web shops are out there looking at what other governments are doing well in designing their sites.

Take for example Poland's site:

Compare that to USA.gov (or any of the other federal web sites out there) and ask yourself, which is inviting me to explore and learn more? USA.gov to me seems a lot like using the Dell web site to buy a laptop (Dell....*shudder*). Too many choices. At least they don't have that side-scrolling list anymore, but even so, it's still makes choosing the one that you want and is right for you daunting.

Poland's design for http://www.poland.gov.pl doesn't overwhelm you with choices. Granted, I can't read the language, but the secondary pages seem equally well organized. There's even a very well done integration of video near the top of the page.

In short, sites like USA.gov and damn well pretty much the rest of the federal government (US) have a design philosophy that is very much mechanical and bureaucratic. Sites like the Polish example above follow a philosophy that is very much human and aims to provide a positive user experience.