Off-topicness about EU's document naming strategy

Altreab

probe wrote:

What really shows up Ireland on this document is Iceland, the neighbouring island to the north - a small country that is free of the schakles of the incompetent, bureaucratic EU.

72% of households have broadband (IRL=13%)
95% of enterprises have broadband (IRL=61%)

.probe

PS: Congratulations on finding this. The EU morons don't apparently want you (or anyone else) to find stuff on their websites - hence they titled the document 4-10112006-en-ap and hid it in a most illogical place http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/PGP_PRD_CAT_PREREL/PGE_CAT_PREREL_YEAR_2006/

If they really wanted it to be read it might be filed under a simple URL logical http://eurostat.eu/broadband/ (or better still if they kept all broadband content at http://broadband.eu) with an appropriate filename for the document itself (eg internet_usage_2006.11.10)

*SARCASM ALERT*
Ah now dont be unreasonable there!!! if they did that people would find out how well others are doing broadband and thats just NOT on!!

*SARCASM MODE OFF*

As Crosbie said last night in the "Popes Children" ..." ... civil servants will tell you how NOT to do things.." not how to actually go ahead and do them.

probe

watty wrote:

If we wern't in the EU we would probabily be way below Greece.

I doubt it. Not wishing to go off topic, all I criticised here was the URL and filename of the EU document which stinks of concealment, bureaucracy, lack of transparency, un-user-friendliness. Par for the course in Brussels!

.probe

watty

This forum is to promote Internet Access in Ireland and discuss the reason why there isn't.

I think you are increasing losing sight of being on topic.

Primarily we are in the situation we are in due to lack of leadership and vision of successive Irish governments. Comreg's difficulties in regulation is a symptom of that, Sponge bob I'm sure can comment more on that. Additionally some eircom policies have suffered from short-termism. In the long term not good for eircom.

This may or may not change with new owners, or new election. But I have doubts.

But loads of FrancoPhilic info and EuPhobic posts I think just confuses people and detracts from highlighting the Irish issues.

damien

probe wrote:

I doubt it. Not wishing to go off topic, all I criticised here was the URL and filename of the EU document which stinks of concealment, bureaucracy, lack of transparency, un-user-friendliness. Par for the course in Brussels!

Going on topic for a change would be nice. IF the EU did not want us to find the information then why are they press releasing about it? Why are they sending information to journalists, why are they allowing Google to index their site, why are they using the Internet. Bealtine without doubt is a very intelligent chap but I don't think it was his Schneier red book that helped him find this story.

Now to be ON topic, my only issue with the Eurostat stuff is that their statistics and figures have been shown to be quite shoddy on more than one occasion on this forum.

probe

damien.m wrote:

Going on topic for a change would be nice. IF the EU did not want us to find the information then why are they press releasing about it? Why are they sending information to journalists, why are they allowing Google to index their site, why are they using the Internet. Bealtine without doubt is a very intelligent chap but I don't think it was his Schneier red book that helped him find this story.

The EU has an appalling record when it comes to its own websites. Long, un-friendly, URLs that frequently change. Little point in bookmarking - because next time you visit, the page has moved somewhere else with no trail. Documents with meaningless titles (file numbers etc.). As a result if you go into any search engine, you end up with pages and pages of irrelevant content while trying to find the required documents. Time wasting.

This has been pointed out to them at the highest levels on several occasions over many years, to no avail. One can only surmise therefore that their policy is one of concealment or to wear researchers down etc. Or the organization is so dumb, wasteful and unaccountable that it couldn’t care less!

Fine they may pander to journos with press releases etc - (if you say so) but a website should be there for everybody, when they want to access the info, and most peoples' time is precious etc.

How often does the EU launch a website for a special purpose. Instead of giving it a simple URL www.specialpurposename.eu it invariably ends up with an unmemorable URL along the lines of http://directorate_number_nameofprogrammeinfrench_CORDIS(orsomethingelsecasesensitive).europa.veryeuropa.eu.int

Google is generally very fast at finding the required info on most websites – it hasn’t been able to master europa.eu or any of its cousins! I can only conclude that the EU employs teams of people to achieve this goal of non-intelligibility.

.probe

Solair

The main reason for the EU's preference for numbered files is that they are published multilingually. broadband_growth_project.pdf wouldn't make a lot of sense in Slovenian, French, Swedish, German, Greek, etc. For the sake of transparency, they index them in every language and number most documents.

Personally, I don't find much difficulty navigating the EU's sites. They could be a little more user friendly, but that can be said of a whole lot of websites.

If you have a serious problem with the site, why don't you make the point to the EU commission representation in Dublin. Supprisingly enough, they will actually be quite happy to take the information on board.

Also, just to blow one other Euromyth out of the water. It's actually not a giant bureaucracy, the EU's entire civil service is significantly smaller than single government departments in many of the member states.
If anything, it's vastly under-resourced in terms of people. It represents 456.4 million people!

If it wasn't for EU policy, we'd probabally be stuck with a semi-state monopoly charging 50 cent a min for a call from O'Connell Street to Drumcondra.

watty

(Or France, I beleive probe is in France).