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Ministerial decision on the quality of government websites

On June 30th, 2006 the Dutch Cabinet of ministers confirmed the decision on the quality of Dutch government websites. In the attachment with this ministerial decision, is stipulated which web standards new government websites must conform to. These guidelines are the same as the current Web Guidelines, plus one additional requirement

“ Build a website according to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 1.0) of the W3C”.

This requirement conforms with the motion, dated April 26th, 2007 from members of parliament Madsen (CDA) en Fierens (PvdA) (Original Dutch PDF version, 16kB), where the government was asked

“To make government accessibility guidelines conform with current and future guidelines formulated by the International World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)”.

The government was also asked

“To ensure that from September 1st, 2007 all new government websites conform to the (internationally available) guidelines, including Quality Mark Drempelvrij.nl and the Dutch Web Guidelines”.

The text of the Ministerial decision on the quality of government websites, including attachments and an explanation, is available on a separate page.

Changes

The current version of the Web Guidelines will be updated and brought into line with the ministerial decision and parliamentary motion. The most important changes are:

1. The addition of guideline R-pd.2.9:

   “Build a website conform the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 1.0) of the W3C”.

   The addition of this guideline is intended to further clarify the already existing guidelines. The intention is to achieve full conformance between the Web Guidelines and Quality Mark Drempelvrij.nl.
2. Remove the distinction between the minimum set and the optimal set of the Web Guidelines. The reason for the distinction in possibilities was for improving existing governmental websites and new to develop websites. Retrofitting existing websites is not an attractive or cost effective approach. A disadvantage of the two sets was that they gave the impression of choice between the minimum and optimal sets that in fact did not exist. In the previous version of the Web Guidelines it is stated that the minimum set was meant only for existing governmental websites.