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FEMA Demands Use of IE To File Online Katrina Claims
WebHostingGuy writes "As reported by MSNBC, if you survived the hurricane and are a Mac, Linux or Firefox user you cannot file a claim online. Further, you must have javascript enabled or face rejection. From the site: 'We are sorry for not being able to proceed your requests because you have failed our tests.' Opera and Netscape don't work either." Also reported at InformationWeek. From that story: "To file a claim online at FEMA's Individual Assistance Center, where citizens can apply for government help, the browser must be IE 6.0 or later with JavaScript enabled. That cuts out everyone running Linux or the Mac operating systems, as well as Windows users running alternate browsers such as Firefox or Opera. When TechWeb tested the site using Windows XP and Firefox 1.0.6, the message 'In order to use this site, you must have JavaScript Enabled and Internet Explorer version 6. Download it from Microsoft or call 1-800-621-FEMA (3362) to register' popped up on the screen." Update: 09/08 13:48 GMT by Z : Added word 'Online' to title to clarify story.
... i'd just love to know what feature they're requiring that everyone else DOESN'T have... I wonder if opera using it's browser masking could do it?
Shadus
"George Bush doesn't care about Mac people!"
I had a sucky sig.
Doesn't the disabilities act apply to FEMA? And doesn't that require a certain level of website?
From TFA:
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
If you think thats even in the top hundred things FEMA has gotten wrong on this, you haven't been watching the news.
Its a non-issue. A tiny percentage of real users have heard of anything other than IE, and an even tinier percentage of people who need FEMA support have electricity, internet access or a computer anymore.
If you all are going to get bent about something FEMA is doing, get bent about the fact that phone and internet is the only way to register and most refugees have neither. Or get bent about the fact that 90% of calls don't go through to the FEMA number.
This is just rediculous to get worked up about. Who cares? If 1% of thet people affected have internet access, and 1% of those use Firefox (and happen to be using someones computer that has Firefox and not IE), then out of the million people affected, what? 100 might have a problem? 100 people tech aware enough to use firefox? They probably can find a damn cell phone.
Likewise M$ stated that they will no longer support the Mac period because basically they have Safari.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
If you've ever tried programming javascript for client side error checking of complex forms, you know that standards are very non-existant in the internet world.
You shouldn't use clientsided checking, as the golden rule in web developing is that you can't trust the client, EVER. Clientsided checking should only be used as a convenience for the user (save the user a trip to the server and back because he forgot to fill in something), not for anything serious. You have to check input at the server script anyway, so why not allow non-javascript browsers?
Now we Linux and Mac users from all over the world can try to test the site. That will at least help stress the servers to the point that simply no one will be able to file their requests.
my other sig is a 500 page novel
I'm sorry, but that's not just true anymore. It's what I do, every day - and where JS/Client side scripting was hellish in the late 90's there are plenty of examples of complex and mature javascript driven apps. Claiming that it's all too hard is the easy way out, there are standards, they are supported, widely amongst modern clients and it's just lazy to say, "screw it, we'll make it work in IE and nothing else".
You should also never be mandating error checking of complex forms on the client side because you can't control the client-side. If it's complex enough that you can't reliably deploy it in JS, you should be writing that logic into the server side code.
<? include ('signature.inc'); ?>
I think in the end you're probably better off just using the telephone. They're more likely to understand technology thats been around for more than 100 years.
"MS-Internet" is confusing to them.
No France
"FEMA Demands Use of IE"
Is this FEMA demanding? Or an ignorant IT services supplier supplying a solution which only works on the IE6 platform? Or (horror of horrors) is this system an in-house job?
Maybe FEMA need to revist their IT procurement strategy - if they have one.
In a situation like this, I would have thought that every effort would be made to make the application process accessible to everybody.
That isn't the issue. The issue is that FEMA created a website for people to file claims and because if it's poor, incompetent and idiotic design (according to reports, the page works great with the IE user agent), people are barred from accessing that functionality. That's the problem. No one is advocating that the FEMA people stop all operations so that they can focus on fixing the site.
When a public institution sets up a service with the tax payer's money for the tax payers to use and in the end there are clients which *UNNECESSARILY* can't access the service, that is just plain incompetence.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Yes, I'm sure that they have their web developer out in a helicopter right now scanning for survivors. Give me a break. Someone is paid to maintain and support this website, and he or she is not doing his job well.
If your code is REMOTELY standards compliant then it'll pretty much work on every browser. You have to really lock yourself into Active X and .Net before you run into true incompatibility, which means you have to decide from the start to use a platform that you know is imprefectly supported.
If this was a business, fine, who cares. But this is a disaster relief agency funded by taxpayer dollars, and they goddamn well better have a site that can be viewed by all citizens who need to view it.
Just part and parcel with the rest of their collossal incompetence during the current distaster.
And don't tell me they have better things to do; I haven't seen 'em do hardly anything yet. They could have used the week after the hurricane, when they were sitting around with their thumbs up their asses while everyone else was doing their job for them to at least make a webpage that could at least be viewed by the people who're still using older versions of IE!
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I don't think anyone has lost focus to the fact that there are bigger problems.
Having said that, the whole situation is bringing other issues to light as well. Requiring IE (6 or later) is just stupid and puts up another hurdle for some of the people seeking assistance.
This is the type of system that should be designed to conform to industry standards and the lowest common denominator. After a disaster we shouldn't be picky. Maybe all the "good" PCs got destroyed.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
As they say, not FEMAs fault
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Seems to work fine in opera 7 so long as you Identify as MSIE 6.0. No problem with the capcha or anything.
Of course, I didn't finish the registration process fully, so I can't say for sure. But it looks like the broweser banning is just a choice on their part rather than a technical limitation.
The ______ Agenda
I think in the end you're probably better off just using the telephone
--krrrr click--Thank you for calling FEMA, we regret to inform you that since you're using a Nokia mobile phone, we cannot connect you to an operator, please switch to a Motorola cellphone to make full use of our services. -bzzz- Have a nice day. --bleep--
That's not true. Opera works. I spent last weekend volunteering at the Reunion Arena shelter in Dallas. We booted one machine with Knoppix because the Windows install was bad. Mozilla and Konquerer failed to load the page correctly. So I downloaded Opera and it worked. Unless FEMA have gone out of their way to eliminate Opera, you should be able to register with Opera. In other words, there is nothing on that page that Opera cannot handle. We've registered a few hundred people already and a few with Opera.
The stupid site really ticks me off. Even with IE you will have problems. I think they did the stupid thing in ASP. Every stupid action you take requires exchange of states between you and the server. If you click before that's complete it will give you and error and you might have to start all over. There was nothing on that page that could not have been done with simple HTML
BTW, yesterday was the first day FEMA started working fully in Dallas. Their computers couldn't network properly so they had to take over OUR PCs to register people by doing exactly the same thing we've been doing. Not only that, they only want those computers, which do not belong to them, to be used only for FEMA registration. In the words of a FEMA worker, "People need money not email or Internet." That would be great if they all knew where the family was or our government was competent enough to provide them with that information. Unfortunately, most people have to look for their family on their own on the Internet.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Just to add to this story...I was listening to a local talk radio station on my way home from work yesterday. They played an interview with a woman who was extremely frustrated, almost to the point of tears, with FEMA and their apparent lack of knowledge on the situation of people displaced by Katrina.
She called them in order to make a claim and they asked her for her address so they could send her the required paperwork (not sure HOW she called them). She told them she no longer had an address as her home no longer existed. They then asked for her home phone number so they could call her back...she again informned them she no longer had a home. They then asked for her cell phone number. She again told them there was no cell phone service where she is located. They then asked her for her fax number...then her email address....you get the picture.
FEMA's motto must be "Let's make it hard for people to get the support they need."
Is FEMA living in a hole, in a cave, in the middle of a desert or what?
>There are other methods to file your claim
AFAICT, many of those filing claims have to do it on line. The are running into problems with this setting up computer kiosks at all the shelters, since even if they are setting up a PC with Windows, it has to have the right version of IE, and many of the PCs are donated.
They can't do it via mail - a ton of people lost their homes, and have no address. Even those who have an address in LA, AL, or MI are still in trouble if they were near the disaster area since the postal service has halted mail delivery.
They can't do it via phone - those that have called have reported that FEMA will only mail them a claim form via the phone.
Is there some other method I am overlooking? AFAICT if you lost your house, and you don't have access to the right version of a web browser this is a pretty major issue.
Hyperbole is the worst thing ever.
Surely they can be nailed on the accessibility.
There is a nice helpful link on every page saying that they are committed to accessibility.
There is even a email address, to allow people who think that accessibility to this site is sub-optimal, to contact them.
If you know anyone who feels this way, maybe they should send an email to
FEMAOPA@dhs.gov
and I'm sure they will be pleased to sort it out.
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
If you are using Proxomitron and Grypen's Latest Filters for Proxomitron, then this sites "IE only requirement" becomes VERY easy to bypass.
How do you we do this once Proxomitron and Gryphen's filters are installed? Easy! Open up
User - Include - Exclude.txt
Then add the following into this file.
www.fema.gov $SET(keyword=.js.ajs.code.flash.popup.iesite.)
Once this is done - you can now visit the site using any god damn browser you want. In my case I tested the registration page under Opera, Firefox, and Mozilla, and as far as FEMA site was concerned, this was my user agent.
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)
So really, I don't know why moronic webmasters, especially for a government or government related site, want to pull shit like this for users whom may not know how to get around "IE only" requirements.
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
Most of the population evacuated. FEMA claim forms are very important to people who left, are safe, but are running out of hotel money, spending money, gas money.
So, you're in a strange city, and your Dell Celeron box is sitting under a foot of mud. Doesn't really matter, as it's two hundred miles away, behind police roadblocks and without power, phone or broadband.
You can't reach FEMA on the phone - they keep hanging up on you because they're swamped.
You're looking for a computer with an internet connection. Not just any computer. No macs, no 'NIX, no webtv, no cellphone browsers, no older PCs. Windows XP doesn't even assure you success. It has to have IE 6, which was a large download and was unavailable at the launch time of any Windows desktop operating system.
You're looking for a computer that has either been updated, or is fairly new and runs windows. Heck, I've never seen IE 6 in a library! Around here, they run IE 5 or Navigator!
My wife's an arabian horsewoman and shot up in her chair when she heard he was in charge of FEMA. He nearly broke the International Arabian Horse Association with lawsuits over equine comsmetic surgery, and soon after solicited personal defense funds as part of his work - an ethics violation. He left with the IAHA in a pretty good uproar in the middle of a three year contract. Either way, it was Charlie Foxtrot.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Having endured very similar circumstances, last year with hurricane Ivan, I can tell you that cell phones worked a month before any land lines or internet.
The difference being, you were in the area where the disaster occurred and dealing with the damaged infrastructure. The people from Katrina are not sitting around New Orleans trying to fill out FEMA forms online, they are 600 miles away in Texas, Alabama, etc, where electricity, phones and computers are available to them.
Those computers are all old, donated systems from corporations looking for a tax break. Those computers do NOT have dual Xeon processors and Windows XP with IE 6 on them, they're old Pentiums and PIIs running windows 98/IE5 and that sort of thing. God forbid Wal*Mart should donate a bunch of new $400 Linspire computers to the Red Cross thinking they can actually be any help.
You wait in line for the computers, you wait in line for the phones, but hopefully everyone can get their stuff done. If you say "oh, none of the computers work with any of the forms you need to resume your life as a human being", then blammo, you just made everybody wait twice as long for the phone.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
You know given the flux that FEMA has been in the past few years, it's not suprising and, in fact, perhaps even understandable, that some tech hasn't yet got to the "Redesign online application form" on his ToDo list yet. I mean lets be honest people: How many of us have projects that have been sitting on our desk for 6 months, 12 months, hell 5 years, that we "just never get around to starting". The difference is that most of us don't work with FEMA and get our prioritizing mistakes posted to the front page of Slashdot when the shit hits the fan.
And just as a side note, if I'm ever in a disaster the size and scope of which requires me to contact FEMA, my first thought is not going to be "Oh gee I better check their website". I know it's 2005 and all but in that situation I'm still going to want to talk to a live person.
"1) How will he tell?"
;-)
;-)
:-(
If someone else tells him. If he happens to poke around in any way, and finds something that seems odd. If anyone remotely technical apart from you looks at the work, who doesn't:
i) Already agree the guy's a fuckwit
ii) Already know you lied to him and covered it up
iii) Agree it's ok to lie to your boss, and
iv) Have nothing to gain by showing the boss he's been lied to.
Once he gets suspicious you have to lie again to cover that. And at the very least he's going to be suspicious from now on, so you're less likely to get away with anything (possibly, more important) in the future.
Basically, once you lie to him once, you'd better be fucking sure he's never, ever going to find out about it. See my earlier point about "it'll never happen" scenarios
"2) If it works, why will he bother?"
Some people place a higher priority on "being obeyed" than on "things working".
They probably justify it to themselves that if they can't trust the employee to do whatever you want, no matter how insane, pointless or counter-productive, then you can't trust the employee, period.
The people are generally paranoid, uneducated in the relevant field, prone to micromanagement, fucking control freaks, and, overwhelmingly, bosses.
"3) You'll give yourself an ulcer if you keep bending over like that"
Well, no ulcers yet, but several bald patches on my head from tearing hair out, yes.
"4) If you let the insane define reality, then your reality will be insane"
Oh, do you work here? What are the odds?
"5) NEVER get into a position where you *need* the job. Build up, save a little, keep within your means and you can kiss a stupid job goodbye (note: if you get sacked because you didn't apply the required solution, but still got the result, you will get severance and dole)."
That's a lovely idea, but unfortunately, with the state of higher education in the UK, you're lucky to come out of your first degree without at least a £10,000 debt. A good first job in computing in my area is £16,000-£18,000. It can take a long while to dig yourself out of the hole, and you'd better quickly get used to getting fucked in the arse on the way...
Also, a note: I don't know where you're from, but here in the UK disobeying any reasonable request from your boss can easily end up as "Gross Misconduct". Getting sacked is also no guarantee you'll immediately get the dole, and the dole doesn't cover things like a car (essential to find a new job), university loan repayments, lack of a recent reference for your CV, etc.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
Look, FEMA fucked up and was sloppy. I have no idea how much was the politically appointee at the top, and how much is institutional stupidity that goes back years. Some blame belongs to Bush and his appointee, on the "buck stops here" logic, but let's be realistic on some of what happened.
The Levee maintenance program has been "underfunded" for THREE decades. Every federal program is "underfunded," because people ask for the world, get something, and can now claim to have been underfunded.
It is NOT clear that if that $250m was restored to the Federal budget that the levees would have held. We have NO IDEA. But when the levees and a system designed for Category 3 Hurricanes gets hit with a slow moving Category 4, better maintenance PROBABLY WOULD NOT have mattered.
Louisiana/New Orleans have a Levee Maintenance Board that is supposed to maintain and improve the Levees. They can issue municipal bonds to pay for it (those lovely options that cities and states have that pay a lower interest rate than treasuries, because the interest is federal tax free, so the government picks up a third of the interest tab in terms of your rate being lower by a third). However, in typical Louisiana corruption, it was filled with political friends with NO INTEREST in Levees, and focused on casinos.
Further, FEMA is EXTREMELY powerful, which makes civil libertarians nervous. Here you have an executive branch department that can single-handedly declare martial law, basically suspend the constitution, etc., powers normally only available to Congress in wartime. The CHECK on government abuse is that a city or state MUST request that help. Now, in an ideal world, FEMA would ONLY be called in REAL emergencies (but when you declare an emergency, FEMA picks up 80% of the tab, so anytime you can you declare an emergency), but federal programs only work when they expand, not only act 1-4 times a decade.
The evacuation of New Orleans was the city's responsibility and the city's PLAN called for using school buses to evacuate people... why didn't this happen?
Notifying FEMA of where shelter's are is a LOCAL responsibility, because FEMA doesn't come in until AFTER there is an emergency. The Superdome is a lovely batch of embarrassment. FEMA learned through official channels 2 or 3 days in that there were people there with no food and water. The news-media was floored "don't you have a television." But as sad as this is, it kinda makes sense... You have some level of lower down FEMA officials going over their checklist, and the Superdome isn't on it, so it is ignored. The higher ups are watching the Superdome footage on TV thinking "those poor people, at least help is on the way." But a disconnect there completely makes sense, and is extremely tragic. Whoever is on the ground sees that it isn't on their list and assumes that it is someone else's. Those above that see it isn't getting help assume that it is on someone's list... More people die... I place the bame 70%-30%, 70% on local officials who didn't notify FEMA properly, and 30% Fed's, because when you see the media talking about people there being without food or medicine for 2-3 days, you call down the pipe until you find out who is responsible for it. The media attention could have made it possible to save lives, if someone thought outside the box.
Decades of mismanagement and corruption in Louisiana caused a catastrophe... Bush is apparently a COMPLETELY incompetent leader who can't get anyone good in the government... This situation sucks. But I'm sick of the partisanship on this... Plenty of stupidity goes around.
BTW: more has been spent on Levee's by the Feds in the 5 years that Bush has been in office than the 8 years that Clinton was in office. That doesn't mean anything, but this "Bush wanted to levees to break so he cut funding" doesn't match reality. I'm pretty sure that the leader of the free world wasn't personally overseeing levee maintenance... unfortunately, neither was the levee maintenance board...
Alex