A great thing. The IRD is going to set up a website to guide SME’s through their tax obligations at various stages of the business.
They are outsourcing the work, and it will worringly include a bunch of Flash as part of the “interactive tool”. We can hope that it doesn’t turn into another Mission-on.
The good news is that The Small Business Company are in charge, and their website actually seems ok – though the formatting is screwed up on FFX3 and their marketing module appears to be a giant advertisement for Yellow. At least it is not a flash monstrosity. Some of their work looks pretty good – including training modules for other parts of Govt.
In general NZ Government Websites are generally excellent – one of the reasons that Mission-On ranks so low on a Google search is that the NZ Govt. websites talking about it rank that much higher. It helps that there is a wonderful set of guidelines – even warning against flash and its’ ilk.
So – We’ll wait with interest to see how this one turns out. Given that September is the launch, I am guessing the cost is a while lot less than $10m.
Lance Wiggs 
Three points Lance… (and this is me speaking as the owner/manager of a handful of SMEs and with 15 years experience in the space)
1) SME’s tend to be a little suspicious of messages from gvmt departments
2) SME’s tend not to have time to navigate flash animated monstrosities
3) Where do SME’s go for advice? To their peers – as such while this programme looks like it might have some value, there are better ways to do it
Putting my dollars where my mouth is I’m in the process of creating a community for Kiwi SME’s – where they can meet, talk, seek resources and generally recreate what occurs over a BBQ or a beer.
To work it needs to be neutral (both from a Government facing perspective and from a corporate perspective). This locale will be neutral, won’t be an advertising ploy and will be open to users articulating critically – be it criticism of the government, businesses or whatever
Give me 6 months (good things take time my friend) and we should be all go…..
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Those flash sites are pitiful. But for Government to use them for business is horrendous. A couple of weeks ago the NZ Parliament web site, http://www.parliament.nz/, was running a survey to “help us improve this web site”.
The whole damnable thing was outsourced and flash based.
I cannot think of a more critical site to our democracy which as such should be open, standards compliant and have zero barriers to use.
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