The Ultimate Ugly Showcase of Current Government Websites
- Posted in Showcases
- 360 Comments »
By Callum Chapman
Something a little different today: a showcase of government websites. The biggest difference between this showcase and others you see here at Noupe is obvious; the majority of the web ‘designs’ (if you can call them that) in this showcase are tremendously awful and poorly coded. And, well, let’s be honest here: butt ugly!
So, what is it all of these governments don’t quite understand? Someone is going to have to help me out here! Some of them say they are ‘Optimized for Internet Explorer 6 and Firefox 1.0′. Firefox 1.0?! How many years ago was that?
Having very out-dated websites representing an entire country can’t be a good thing – at all. They are difficult to use, the text is usually difficult to read, they have ridiculously slow loading speeds (depending on the country, of course), some of them are so bad they hurt your eyes.
To top the above points off, if you happen to be looking for one small piece of information (which you most probably are), it could take you hours on end of waiting, clicking, more waiting, napping, more clicking… until you’re finally presented with a ‘Server not found’ error message! If I was looking at moving to a country and I got a server not found message, I think I would be put right off on the spot!
Bangladesh, Costa Rica and Papua New Guinea are just a few of the culprits of the dreaded non-loading pages, Russia is one of the many (far too many!) design offenders that use horrific drop-shadows. Also, the body copy font size is usually way too small for comfortable reading (Belarus).
However there are a couple that stand out from the rest – how many of you can tell me which ones they are?
Asia
Afghanistan
Afghanistans website manages to incorporate a workin RSS Feed but not much else. What’s with the lowered opacity image?!
Bangladesh
Well, this site was loading for 10 minutes and, as you can see, didn’t get very far!
Cambodia
Cambodias government website has a great selection of Related Sites, but its 90s style color scheme and poorly coded structure makes it yet another terrible looking website.
China
China has half managed a decent website for their government, a suitable and easy to read color scheme, a nice bold heading and an RSS Feed!
Hong Kong has a better idea then a lot of other sites here.
India
India has incorporated some nifty Web 2.0 highlight effects in with their 90′s style layout. The spotlight section doesn’t quite hit the spot though!
Indonesia
Indonesias government website looks a little like several different images merged together to create a banner style header with almost impossible to read text.
Iran
Iran makes great use of an iFrame style text box to display the ‘Last News’ in a scrollbox even though they have plenty of space left directly beneath it.
Iraq
Iraq uses some terrible gradients and drop shadows on their aligned header type. For some unknown reason, the links on the right aren’t doing what they’re told either – but on second thought I highly doubt they were told in the first place.
Israel
Israels government has done their website pretty well compared to others, don’t quite understand what the two dots off the ‘v’ in their logo are for though!
Japan
Japan has a very calm, simple and informative design.
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan has a better knowledge of color schemes and has come up with a half decent advertisment in the bottom left. Something still isn’t quite right though… and the calendar obviously serves a great purpose for those who were about to ask!
Korea
Korea has managed to pick up some great internet talk when creating their government website and decided to call it an e-Goverment… that explains it all.
Malaysia
Malaysia has incorporated the option to change text size and color with their website. The designers should sort out the spacing between the thumnbail images and bullet points.
Maldives
The Maldive’s government website seems to have the content randomly placed on the page. And off the record: guys, letter-spacing isn’t just used for fun!
Pakistan
Pakistans ‘official web gateway to the Government’ uses lots of Photoshop feathering, gradients and drop shadows with some groovy dotted tables!
Saudi Arabia
You can’t get much worse than Saudi Arabia’s government website, it’s overcrowded and uses bevel and emboss; a user’s nightmare!
Singapore
Singapore hasn’t done too badly with their government website, they’ve incorporated a pretty stylish photo of the city center in both daylight and nightlight; we are not too sure about the blending it into the rest of the page via feathering, though.
Thailand
Thailand’s government website can’t get much simpler, it has various gradients and feather objects with outer glows to produce an attractive design – someone, please remove these terrible HTML borders!
Uzbekistan
A very clean and well-commented (see the source code) design from Uzbekistan. The site uses many icons and a very light color scheme that makes it easy to read the text. However, on some pages there are certainly too much whitespace. Nice surprise: that’s certainly not what we expected from Uzbekistan.
Vietnam
Vietnam has combined various warm colors to make a slightly over-the-top color scheme to use on their government website. The alignments are all wrong and you can see the table borders… should they even be using tables?!
Europe
Austria
Austria, compared to other websites, is on the right track. There are no visible HTML tables and the navigation menu down the left side of the page is half decent.
Belgium
Well done, Belgium! I actually quite like this government website – they’ve combined a sleek color scheme with plenty of important information and stylish icons.
Belarus
Hey, Belgium had a good government website, you can’t really expect much more, can you? We’re back to normal with Belarus’ website; table layout, small body copy size, not enough white space and a bit messed up site. However, the page does contain an RSS feed.
Bulgaria
Bulgaria’s government website’s source code is full of the legendary HTML table tags, and what for? Empty tables! Excellent!
Croatia
I admit, Croatia’s website doesn’t look great, but it looks a damn lot better than other government websites in this showcase. They’ve managed to include some headers, search options and a half decent menu!
Cyprus
Cyprus’ government website makes it feel like Autumn all year round; of course it’s not true, so I’m not quite sure what the leaves are there for!
Czech Republic
Czech Republic are in a similar position as Croatia, their site is much better but not quite nice. If they improved some horrible type and updated a few things to make it a little more modern, it wouldn’t be half bad. Nothing compared to what we’re used to, though!
Denmark
Denmark, I’m impressed! They’ve managed a pretty good looking color scheme, a nice navigation menu and have even chucked in some nice photography in there to show off their country!
Finland
I hate to say it Finland, but to me, the website doesn’t look finished. There are gaps between menu items, and unfinished edges on areas that display the main content.
France
France’s site honestly did damage my eyes. Purple and red might work well in some very rare cases, but it really doesn’t here. A uneven menu on a government website? Hmm… Looks like someone hacked at this design with a very sharp machete.
Germany
Germany has a solid, clean and sharp design with probably way too many navigation options. I have to admit I don’t really know where to start. There seem to be some random blocks that don’t align well with each other.
Greece
Greek ‘e-Government’ website uses some really strange shapes and some very, very out of focus stock photos. The seperators used in the navigation menu seem to be random lengths, or is that just me? The site looks a bit more like an online-shop than a government website.
Hungary
Hungary’s government website isn’t something I’d usually like, but compared to some others on this list it’s actually been put together reasonably well. They’ve even managed to incorporate seamless patterns – now that’s the spirit!
Iceland
Iceland, Iceland, Iceland. Oh why have you given us the option to make your website worse via a user styles link? Hey, nice drop shadow on the Information advertisement!
Ireland
Ireland can’t get much simpler with their government website, they seem to have thrown a couple of images, some tables and some text together to form a very outdated website.
Italy
Italy, with so many others in this showcase, also has a very outdated website. They do however have an RSS feed, although being reminded old HTML pages like that still exist day in day out would make me feel quite depressed!
Latvia
Sure, Latvia doesn’t have a great looking site, but it does a much, much better job than some other sites in this showcase. They even have a map in their sidebar!
Lithuania
Lithuania’s government website uses horrible colors; a combination of red, green, brown, yellow and blue – and none of them are particulary nice shades!
Luxembourg
Luxembourg’s website feels a little incomplete and like the web developer ran out of time to work on the project. The buttons in the right sidebar (that aren’t actually buttons – all they do is display a URL and telephone number!) are on a white background – why did they not just use a transparent PNG?
Netherlands
Netherlands have done a better job than most on this list. They’ve gone with a simple layout with quite a nice sleek style – I think this style works really well as a government website. Nice, clean and simple!
Norway
Again, Norway’s website isn’t great, but it looks clean and modern.
Poland
Well I have to say, out of all the countries in this showcase, Poland was one of the ones I was expecting to have a poor website, but instead they have one of the best on this list! They use some lovely cloud images, a great creative logo that fits in well with the web design (or the other way around!), lots of nice colors, some great photography and overall a clean and modern design. This one could quite easily make it into a beautiful showcase!
Portugal
Portugal hasn’t done too badly either! Their website is aligned well, has a nice color scheme and they even use Twitter which they managed to incorporate into their design! However, things do seem a bit cramped – maybe they need a little more white space!
Romania
All the better sites on this list are coming at once! Romania have managed to incorporate RSS icons into their web design; however the upper half of the design does feel a little overloaded with blue!
Russia
I hope the design of Russia’s government website doesn’t have a degree in anything to do with design or art, or any kind of qualification for that matter. This is just a nightmare; bevel & emboss, ugly drop shadows and awful glows. Something tells me that the site was designed back in 90s. Eurggh!
Slovakia
Slovakia’s website is nice and very simple – they’ve managed to lay it out pretty well and have used a matching color scheme. Not bad, not bad at all!
Spain
Oh dear! Spain uses some huge drop shadow effects on their graphics, but the overall look and feel is not that bad. The line height could be increased and the design could use some padding.
Sweden
Swerden has done a nice job on their government’s website. They used an attention grabbing color scheme which actually draws your eyes to different areas (such as the red, blue and green). The only thing I’m not too sure about is the dark red/brown to red gradient used as a header background at the top of the left sidebar.
Switzerland
Switzerlands website is a bit overcrowded and the alignment seems to be incorrect. Overall the design appears to be simple and the navigation is more or less OK. The images on the left hand side seem to be underlined!
United Kingdom
United Kingdom’s government website isn’t too bad – it’s aligned pretty well, has enough whitespace and is relatively easy to read. I’m not quite sure why they use an orange color scheme, though? Notice that this website doesn’t have a UK flag anywhere – that’s a bit odd for a government website.
Ukraine
It sure would be boring searching Ukraine’s government website for a vital piece of information! Everything seems to look the same and nothing really stands out from anything else on the page! Also, the small font size makes the page difficult to read.
Africa
Cameroon
Cameroon’s government website is over-crowded. It uses various different colors in a desperate attempt to grab your attention but simply doesn’t work.
Egypt
Egypt’s government website could have been one of the nicer ones in this showcase, but it’s poorly coded and seems to have randomly placed images.
Ethiopia
Ethiopia’s government website uses several shades of blue which don’t quite go with their green, yellow and red flag despite the blue circle.
Kenya
The biggest fault with Kenya’s government website is there poor use of justified text alignment. They also use a crazy color palette to catch your attention which again doesn’t work!
Madagascar
Madagascar’s government website could have possibly been influential in 1999 with its hover image buttons and patterned background.
South Africa
Possibly one of the worst on this list; there seems to be random blocks of color aswell as really ugly tables. Please do remember that this website is best viewed using a 800×600 resolution in IE4!
Tunisia
Tunisia uses a terrible color scheme of light cyan and mid-blue mixed with a little brown and red. Hey, at least they have an RSS Feed!
Uganda
Uganda’s government website is one of the best so far; although I’m not quite sure why they’ve used that horrible pastel yellow and white gradient under the interact heading.
Zimbabwe
You’ll see from the screenshot that Zimbabwe’s government website doesn’t look like it’s finished loading, that’s because after 5 long, long minutes, I had enough and decided to screenshot anyway!
North America
Canada
Canada is yet another culprit of the outdated glow and feathered banners. That’s a pretty random color scheme they’re using on their left sidebar, too!
Mexico
Woah, now this is a pretty bad design. Everything seems to be everywhere and it’s all right in your face, I don’t know what to look at! They have managed to keep up to date a little though and have a Facebook and Twitter page!
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.
Central America
Costa Rica
Well, having a Server not found message come up when visiting a governments website would certainly make me change my plans (if I had any) to move there!
Guatemala
Guatemala’s government website is highly focused on the leader of the Guatemala’s government, having many photos of him throughout the page. The site seems to have way too many design elements that are all fighting for attention making the site difficult to scan.
Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s government website decided to stick to a blog layout to display its news and updates. That’s an unusual choice. Can you find the search box on the page?
Bahamas
Bahamas’ goverment website with a striking color scheme, a news ticker and a bit weird <more>-links. The page has a copyright statement with the year 2005 in the footer.
Barbados
Barbados’ government website is a typical 90′s HTML website – random colors, drop shadowed/gradient headers and some real ugly graphics!
Cuba
Cuba tried to do ‘something special’ with their government website by including a background image – it’s a shame they did it completely wrong and left far too much white space!
Dominican Republic
(Updated)Well, that’s a real surprise: the government website of the Dominican Republic is clean and nice and uses a layout which is common for newspapers and online magazines. However, the page seems to have way too many design elements at once – a bit of padding would be very helpful here.
Jamaica
Jamaica’s government website isn’t too bad – some things are a little big in my opinion, such as the header gradients and the type used under the ‘news’ section, but other than that it’s not bad at all!
Puerto Rico
The header used in Puerto Rico’s website design is quite nice; a cute photograph of a parrot and a case where a drop shadow on the header actually works reasonably well. Any lower on the page though and things become a little dated with terrifying borders and horrible color schemes.
Saint Lucia
Saint Lucia’s website reminds me of the first website I made when I was about 7 years old using Yahoo! Geocities. Now that’s what I call old-fashioned!
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago’s site isn’t too bad – it’s a little old fashioned but they have managed to draw my attention to different sections of the design by using a reasonable color scheme – unlike most others!
South America
Argentina
Argentina played it safe when designing their website. They’ve used a simple color scheme and an easy to read layout.
Bolivia
Bolivia’s government website is a complete mess to put it nicely! The header is awful, and everything graphic makes me cringe!
Brazil
Brazilian website kind of reminds me of a dated online shop with it’s multiple navigation menus and drop down lists – or is that just me?
Chile
Now this one made me laugh the most. Chile is kind enough to put a message at the bottom of their website ‘design’ stating that it has been Optimized for IE6 & Firefox 1.0 – yay!
Peru
Peru’s website is a tiddy bit dated but it’s better than a few in this pretty terrible showcase! I think they need to rework the structure of the main content area.
Uruguay
I can’t bare to look at Uruguay’s government website, just look at them terrible black and white gradients used down the left side of the design – ahhh!
Venezuela
Venezuela, for a country a lot of people haven’t heard much about, did a pretty good job with their design. Everything has ben laid out quite nicely but they need to improve that terrible text layout in their main content area!
Oceania
Australia
Australia has done a great job with their government website; it’s simple, stylish and isn’t over the top. In other words, it does what it’s suppose to do well, and that’s a good thing!
Fiji
I’m not quite sure what happened to Fiji’s ‘online portal’ but the alignment of the main content seems to be a little (or a lot) out of place!
New Zealand
New Zealand, like Australia, has done a great job. They use a simple and sleek design that serves easy to find and read content – just what the user needs!
Papua New Guinea
When visiting Papua New Guinea’s website I didn’t even get a ‘Server not found’ error message – instead I got a broken URL/image error message, that’s nice of them!
Solomon Islands
Solomon Islands, as can be seen from the screenshot, is a Drupal powered website. It looks like it could have been a promising website, if only the rest of it was actually there! Maybe they forgot to finish it?
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About the author
Callum Chapman is a freelance graphic designer. He is the creative blogger behind Circlebox Blog, a design related blog offering articles, inspiration, tutorials and free, high-resolution textures. Drop him a line at Twitter!
You should add the Canada Government…
BAD = canada.gc.ca
So is India’s official website. I guess they choose the worst of the worst web designers to get it done.
I agree about the Canada website. It’s outdated and messy. And the first photo, of two guys shaking hands, is comical because of the female “Mountie” who’s watching them.
Has anyone noticed that the coolest countries have photos of men AND WOMEN on their home pages, but the suckiest ones have just guys? I suppose it’s appropriate that the patriarchal cultures warn us of their problems right up front.
Interesting website. Nice to see that others notice good design on the rare occasion when it’s presented. Thanks!
For the Netherlands, alle goverment websites are build in the same style, foreign affairs Ministry of finance. They all have the same clean style.
It’s very clean and simple but the coding is good and functional. Much better done then other countries! The one of the netherlands is one of my favorites.
the guy who wrote the ugly web sites thing is an idiot
he points out things that are really obvious and he still doesn’t get them
he’s bitching about a calendar being on a site and it’s obvious that it’s not just a regular calendar but that it’s for a news archive
it says it right above it
AND the dots above the “v” in the Gov logo is to make it look like a checkmark and he’s acting like they’re just there and confusing
maybe these things should be more obvious to people b/c we’re clearly simple minded and can’t figure things out
i hope this was for a school project b/c otherwise, he makes really annoyingly simple points and doesn’t have much of a case. I could note some things wrong with sites that have much more value than the things he’s saying
anyway
and he doesn’t point out that the search icon w/ the magnifying glass is completely off kilter with the search field bar for australia.
it’s ugly as sin
and no. i did not use caps in this comment… b/c it isn’t a web site.
i could have written a better article.
and before anyone has anything to say due to possibly being pissed off at my opinion, i’d like to point out that i am simply giving it and that is healthy. just like this guy gave his.
This is a stupid reaction! These all are personal observations, ever heard of the term ‘personal’?? That means ‘your own opninion’ and the writer’s opinion is his own, personal opinion. Your stupid reaction isn’t ‘healthy’ al all, whatever that means!
Looks like Bekkie there got up on the wrong side of bed this morning. When you start by calling someone you disagree with an “idiot”, it doesn’t do much for your credibility.
I think that a lot of judgments on web design are subjective, or reflect cultural differences. What looks “crowded” to you might look sparse to someone else.
Hey Becci poo. You’re so lame. Why bother?! The article is obviously making a light-hearted observation about gov. sites that look shit, which they all do!
So go ahead, write that ‘better article’. Can’t wait to hear your in-depth review of whatever it is makes your happy and see you beautifully designed site.
Hey guys, what about this one?!
http://education.qld.gov.au/learningplace/
hahahaha
I completely agree with you. This ‘article’ was a huge waste of time.
Nice analysis. My country is one listed here and my opinion is lke yours.
I totally agree with rebecca on this one.
I don’t; she’s stupid in her reaction and so are you!
Agreed! Rebeccas observation is very narrow minded.
Right, totally. Because calling someone “stupid” completely makes YOUR opinion that much more credible.
You pointed out earlier that this article was a “personal observation”. Well, isn’t that comment a personal observation on the article? Or are you and merely those who agree with the author allowed to express their personal observations?
So let me get this straight…you were defending the author of this article for stating his/her opinion by bashing someone ELSE who stated a dissenting opinion.
Is it just me, or do I smell a hypocrite?
It works both ways,
on the whole, the showcase was a great idea. however I can see that there are some websites listed that are not government sites but promotion websites of a country in question.
Honestly, it’s unforgivable that you don’t have the North Korean government website
korea-dpr.com/
kremlin.ru/ – oficial Russian goverment page
This is alright, but this is quite unfair for the govements. They arn’t all as concerened as you are about a website.
Yeah let’s take the piss out of third world countries for have a crap website!
Honestly, half the countries in this list have a lot more important things to worry about than whether Mr Chapman likes their choice of colour scheme.
If they had better websites it would encourage people to visit their countries and/or make it easier for people to visit their countries, as you need to apply for visas etc for a lot of them – not an easy task on a hard to navigate website. More tourists = more money, more money = coming up in the world? Correct?
Callum, um, how old ARE you? Judging by the writing I’d say pre-college. And then there’s the photo. Why would I be any more likely to visit a country if they have a pretty web site? or any less likely to visit if it’s crappy? I doubt I’m even going to visit a country’s site before embarking on the trip. As has been mentioned before, some of these places have far more important things to worry about than proper use of fonts and whitespace. Like, staying alive. I’m amazed some of these places even HAVE websites.
All that said, I am impressed with your initiative to do this article. It is relatively harmless.
Swerden LOL
ha..ha..ha, my gov site (ID) is one of ugly..hmmm I hope it will be fix for next time, it’s correction for my gov web dev team. thanx ;-)
I found this list rather entertaining. I find it hard to believe that so many nations of the world have still failed to grasp the importance of a web presence. As a South African, I agree completely that our government site is awful (and hang my head in shame). Perhaps I should contact them and offer a redesign…
If you are a South African you will know that that page is not the official SA website
How about this one http://www.gov.ph/ I’m so shame when I visit it… you should include this one.
Very interesting post!
New website of Lithuania is here: http://www.lrvk.lt/.
Just noticing to uptate the link.
Cheers!
I am wondering what browser was used to test this because it doesn’t seem to be one of major two. When I visited it on a PC in Firefox 3.5 and IE 8 they both displayed correctly.
It was pretty obvious to me that the authors comments were incorrect about the Egypt website having “randomly placed images” – its margins were being interpreted incorrectly and forcing the design to pop.
Its a bit unfair to use a niche browser to compare the sites unless that was the specific focus of the list.
It was Firefox. :)
Totally Agree with you mate! lol
>I hope the design of Russia’s government website doesn’t have a degree [...] Something tells me that the site was designed back in 90s. Eurggh!
You’re absolutely right, this website was created in 1998.
The reason there’s no Union Jack on the British gov website is probably because it would be deemed as offensive to the human rights of radical muslims…
I was just scanning through the comments to find one that answered that question lol…
we cant put a union jack on our government site because it would be deemed racist to those that live here but do not consider themselves British…
What a pathetic country we live in
I was about to say something along those lines, it is crazy how our government is so scared to put something that represents our country on our own country’s website
Welcome to our world (US).
good work……
Brazil’s website design has recently remade. More than 500 pages of services was totally redone from scratch at once. See more here:
http://translate.google.com.br/translate?u=http://www.brasil.gov.br/noticias/0-brasil-lanca-novo-portal-com-mais-de-500-servicos-disponiveis-para-os-cidadaos&hl=pt-BR&langpair=auto|en&tbb=1&ie=UTF-8
Typo:
Should be “than”
Hong Kong has a better idea then a lot of other sites here.
Don’t forget this one.
NEPAL
http://i44.tinypic.com/i3vrsh.jpg
surely the chart topper lol
suck the butter from my ass!!!
Haha! I can’t believe the author actually took the time to visit ALL the websites of these countries! I am from Singapore and agree the Singapore government’s website could be better (based on the version shown in the picture here); it looks too cluttered.
How about Government of Kosova website? http://www.rks-gov.net
Here is a screenshot which I think it looks great compared to others listed in here
http://i43.tinypic.com/35mp382.jpg
http://www.georgia.gov.ge/
This is Georgia’s Government Site please review and add it in the list
I saw this website a while back, just needed to post it. Talk about a mess… http://www.rgisc.org. PLEASE REVIEW!
Totally agree with you. Nice lengthy ugly website list collections.
Pretty intense, let me grab a cup of coffee
I’m a government web designer, and I would really like to see a well-researched post about GOOD government web design. Governments have limited resources and often don’t have centralized decision-making when it comes to technology. We will be redesigning our site this year, and having a list of success stories from city, state, and national governments would be a great help!
Brasil’s official site was redone. Here’s the new one: http://www.brasil.gov.br/
We have YouTube AND Twitter AND RSS! SO HA :D About a million times better than the old one.
surprised to see croatia’s is the best one.
Excellent compilation!
About Venezuela, I think the proper web site to show should be http://www.gobiernoenlinea.ve/ It’s ugly, but the content suits best to this article purpose.
The one you’re showing here it’s from the President’s Office.
Again, great article :)
the screenshot of the The site of Chiliean gov is was tooken while the site was under contruction.
im surprized Philippines is not included! haha
oe pagina culia, esa no es la pagina del gobierno de chile
terrible aweonao gringos qls chupen la q cuelga
hmmm…..I agree these are bad. This post involves more emotional reaction rather than a true designer point of view.
He’s young.
great idea for making a blogpost, but I think all the descriptions lack of a real analysis, this is just a compilation of poor opinions and no real arguments in any subject: comunication, information design, graphic design, really I expected much more from the title/subject of the post
that isn’t the actual Chilean government website.
http://www.gobiernodechile.cl/
We are aware about the actual poor quality of the design of the website (and the logo) but is much better than the snapshot you post here.
Great post btw
I think this is number one
174.142.8.50/pages1list.aspx?page_site=1&x_Page_site=1&z_Page_site=%3d%2c%2c&x_page_cat=2&z_page_cat=%3d%2c%2c&pages1_psearchtype=&pages1_psearch=
“they even are not have DNS name ”
All your “analysis” don’t need to end in exclamation points, its veryhard to take you seriously. This was not a well executed post. Many of you web sites listed are not official websites of the respective countries either.
i was really surprised by the polish website, they even have a different b&w Layout because of the … current events, i would say that would be worth an extra mention!
Great showcase, with some obvious link/source errors, and I don’t agree with many of the design comments, but it’s still great to have a general overview on different ideas of information presentation around the globe. Most are fungly for sure, but that’s governmenty goodness for ya.
Hello Callum
I had to applaud u for you’re perspective of GOV websites and their poor designs, very funny !
You have a nack for being critical of others poor choices.
I wish there were more writers on the web like you !!
The website for India seems so cluttered to me. I wish they’d space everything and add a better navigation, because that’s just too much text all at once.
Let’s not even get started on the Canadian one.
Damn, people blowing themselves up all around the third world and you want to sit back in your Aeron and pass judgment about the quality of their web designers.
por favor ingresar en suramerica, http://www.presidencia.gov.co y http://www.colombiaespasion.com
Hello,
I’m just here to inform you that the Hong Kong government website recently got a redesign @ http://www.gov.hk/en/residents/, and I think it looks pretty neat. :)
Thank you – I’m always looking for good tips, hints and ideas to improve – I’ve been researching information now for quite a while, and I’m always trying to come up with unique ideas for visitors to my site. I’ll be sure to check back soon for more ;-)
Yep, only Denmark deserves credit!
Nice collection, but you forgot this one: http://www.korea-dpr.com/. I am considering to settle down there as a web designer instead of Germany
I’m from Indonesia and I’m ashamed for my country website. That’s what happened when the friend of friend, family of the family of the minister or his/her friends got the contract for the site development.
Dude, what browser did you use? Bangladesh came out perfectly, in under ten seconds. Somebody’s just obviously racist.
That was 10 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back. It would have been more productive for me to sit here and smoke 20 cigarettes.
I completely agree with Rebecca’s observations. If you’re going to write an article with this degree of content it’s quite an undertaking if you’re going to offer an informed, in-depth and educated critique of each site. A list of screen shots with a few sarcastic remarks does not make a good article. This was an exercise in stating the obvious, incorrectly.
shocked to see that the Philippines did not made it. lol check our government site. http://www.gov.ph/
Yep they sure are ugly and outdated.
I worked on a recent government website in China and it’s amazing how much bureaucracy goes into the designs… not fun to design.
Its shameful for our government to see our Govt Website (Pakistan)there, but wait, our government has no shame as far as our current government is concerned.
My country has some good designers and developers but no one will get to design governmental websites just because those contracts goes to official’s nephews, or the one who will pay commission up front.
I dont know, why we have make habbit to always blame government for evreything.
Where’ Slovenia? Check this out http://www.vlada.si/
The 2 favorites in my opinion are Denmark and Australia
There’s quite a few layouts which should be banned altogether for being a government portal.
was it just me but did others notice that Iran copied the header from Germany. ha ha ha ha ha real creative guy!
Actually, the Polish site here is not the one of the government, but a promotional one.
The Prime Minister website: http://www.premier.gov.pl/en/
The President Website: http://www.president.pl/en/
And the Sejm website: http://sejm.gov.pl/english.html
It surprises me that you expected the Polish website to be so bad. Poland has a massive collection of extrememly talented designers so this comment was probably down to your ignorance rather than any education.
Poland also has the team that developed “The Witcher” video game. It’s definitely one of the best from the past 5 years!
Heh, what about offical web-site of Russian President http://www.kremlin.ru (eng.kremlin.ru) or official goverment site goverment.gov.ru
gov.ru is just domain name right now
After some investigation, Paupa New Guinnea’s broken image should point to this beautiful GIF: http://www.pngonline.gov.pg/image/construction.gif
;)
Hi,
This is such a great resource that you are providing and you give it away for free. I enjoy seeing websites that understand the value of providing a prime resource for free. I truly loved reading your post.
Thanks!
Mamunur Rasid
oDesk Outsourcing Provider.
Be Your OwnCoder
You’re right about some of these websites, but it’s only a matter of taste, buddy!
You think the French website is ugly, huh? Come On!
What is the uggliest of your selection ? The competition is hard ! Iceland, Ethopia or Bulgaria…
nice website for egypt
i think you miss one of the ugliest gov websites. it’s St.Vincent and The Grenadines. check it out
of coz i love indonesian portal
Nice collection of government website.Thanks for sharing
I want to understand from the author Mr. Callum Chapman what are the specific issues with the India Portal. It would help us to take it up with the authorities to fix those.
I think for a information seeker the Portal is really good.
Israel:
Perhaps the two dots over the “V” are there to complete a check mark symbol.
It would be interesting to see if any were any cultural factors that led to some of the design/content decisions. ‘ugly’ is being applied from a western culture and values model then ‘designer’ aesthetic (in that culture model) perhaps. For example, Would some local citizens expect a text heavy institutional look for that sense of authority,trust, credibility or other values that may not be apparent without cultural considerations e.g. power distance relationships, cultural values etc. Hopefully a local or culturally sensitive ux practitioner and designer will tackle some of these for their audiences.
I should have keep my mouth shut :)