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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.
"George Bush doesn't care about Mac people!"
I had a sucky sig.
From TFA:
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I hate this stupid shit. And I know it's not even malicious, because I've seen it happen before at government agencies. It's out and out incompetence. Although it seems that given all the other crap FEMA has fucked up lately, this won't even register to most people.
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
Would you expect any less from FEMA?
I tell you, if they get any more imcompetent, George Bush is going to have to give them a medal.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
The Section 508 accessibility guidelines are a requirement for all U.S. government sites. I have helped to develop several .gov sites, and we take 508 compliance very seriously. I think the people responsible for www.fema.gov are about to get dragged over the coals, and rightly so. Making their website work in one *one* browser is the antithesis of accessibility.
the best part is that using IE7 gets you the same errorpage. Those guys just know everything about browsers, don't they...
./R My blog
1. A lot of people have Macs. A lot of people are stranded without easy access to multiple computer platforms.
2. Aid workers are busy setting up computers for these people to use to contact relatives and fill out aid forms. They are not getting free Dell computers or free Windows licenses. They are setting up older computers that have been donated and may not run IE 6.
3. FEMA's listed phone number will trigger an automated form delivery to your home address. In New Orleans. Not very helpful.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
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?
Either way, somebody's in line for another Medal of Honor...
I wasn't aware that using an alternative operating system and/or browser was considered a disability.
Before we go off the high board (ok, maybe while we're in the air before hitting water anyway...)
Link and the below snippet:
This is a case many of us are all to familiar with. One where the 'product' is being used in an environment that it was not intended.
"Mike Quealy, a FEMA spokesperson, explained to me that they are aware of the issue, and are currently working on a application that supports all of the most popular browsers. Quealy said that the application in question was originally an in-house tool, meant to be used by call center people. Internet Explorer was the official in-house browser, so the application was coded with IE in mind."
So we have an *INTERNAL* app that was opened to the public, thus adding new browsers for which it was not designed to it's possible clients.
It's also a good lesson for designing things even when you *know* the environment in which it will be used...that can change and it's best to work with standards rather than the easiest, but perhaps proprietary choice.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Surely it's made of coprolite, not copper.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Well he did appoint the man in charge, someone who had been on the board of International Arabian Horse Association. He seems to have left there under a cloud about contributions to their legal defense fund and immediately got a job as FEMA director. I think he is highly qualified in disaster planning, unfortunately not disaster releif planning.
http://www.denverpost.com/katrina/ci_2999761
I think Bush can take some heat for this kind of miss-use of the public trust. These are not choice political plums to be given to big contributers or supporters but to qualified hard working capable individuals with credentials for the job. Especially when the lives of our mother and fathers and sons and brothers and daughters and uncles and neices are involved.
The buck needs to stop where the fundemental problems stem from, not only where the problems show up.
I seem to recall a phrase from a President...
Something about a buck stopping somewhere...
Especially since the bucks responsible for upgrading the levee system were PERSONALLY slashed from the budget and diverted to Iraq - which in itself was a fucking moronic operation.
Not to mention the moronic folding of FEMA into DHS,as has been pointed out by every commentator in the last week. Which was no surprise to me, since FEMA's primary mandate is to secure the state, not the citizenry, in an emergency. In fact, the only "emergency" FEMA is mandated to "manage" is a threat against the state. It's no accident they're the ones with the authority to do all the things the conspiracy buffs like to cite.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
But what I fear is malice sufficiently advanced enough to disguise itself as incompetence.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Exactly. I started my current job a little over a year ago, maintaining and developing a public website for a multimillion-pound company.
The MD is a raving MS fanboy, and shortly after arriving I was informed in no small measure that I was developing for IE, and "if the site doesn't work in any of those other browsers, who cares".
(One of the funny things is, we actually produce Mac versions of some of our products, but the MD apparently doesn't care that most of those users wouldn't be able to see our site (or assumes they'll download IE/Mac, because it's Microsoft, so it must always be the best option).)
Happily (and because my boss(es) don't know any better), I've coded everything to standards and used a few quick CSS/markup hacks to get everything still looking nice in IE.
Since I started we've had three "it'll never happen" situations with (potentially extremely profitable) users using different browsers or OSes, and happily the site's worked perfectly for them.
We've also had one "it'll never happen" situation where I did actually give in and do it the way the Board specified (dynamic content served by ASP.NET instead of Perl, on a server too old to support ASP.NET reliably). Because our (cheap, crappy) hosting contract is on a Linux machine, we have to host all ASP.NET content on another (in-house) server, and seamlessly (heh, make that "as seamlessly as we can") transfer users between the main part of the site (static HTML on Apache/Linux) and the dynamic pages (ASP.NET/Windows Server).
Predictably enough the tiny pipe into the inhouse servers went down, and we ended up with a convoluted sequence of events that lead to us needing to host an ASP.NET page on the (external) Linux server. Due to the crappiness of the hosting contract they were unable to offer (or the MD was unwilling to pay) for the service, so the site had huge sections missing for several days, mostly important advertising campaign landing-pages which provide the majority of marketing leads for the company.
Had I been allowed to develop the content in the language I specified (Perl/PHP, simply for the portability), this would never have happened - we could have transferred the dynamic pages to the Linux server at no extra cost (in fact they would probably have already been there), and the site would have carried on as normal.
The morals of the story are this:
Never disobey your boss on technical matters, even when he has no fucking clue what he's babbling about. That's how you get fired.
If you can possibly obey the letter of his instructions (but disobey the spirit) and do it the right way, go for it - just cover your arse and don't spend an unreasonable amount of extra time.
People who know nothing about technical matters should let their fucking techies make technical decisions. You pay them for a reason, and if anyone could do their job why not fire them and hire a schoolkid for a fraction of the money?
"It'll never happen" scenarios pop up 100% of the time, given enough time. Your techies know this, and will sensibly plan for it. With sufficiently good techies (and budget) you never suffer the consequences of a bad technical decision, so you don't and won't.
In other words, get good techies, then get the fuck out of the way and let them do their job.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
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."
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Bush appoints the (completely unqualified, but old-boy friend of Bush) head of FEMA.
The head of FEMA is responsible for his organisation.
FEMA fucks up royally, in everything from its response to the New Orleans disaster to stupid piddling stuff like unnecessarily rejecting non IE-browsers on its website (which, nevertheless, can cause additional hassle and stress for people already destitute, financially ruined and recently-bereaved).
Damn straight Bush should carry the can for the whole fuck-up. He should resign, step down or be impeached for fucking the country until it can't respond to a simple natural disaster that everyone saw coming hours or days (weeks?) away. Not to start a right vs. left flamewar, but frankly I wouldn't be averse to seeing him do jail-time for the damage he's caused to your country.
The director of FEMA should resign immediately, since he's proven himself unable to do his job. He should emphatically not just be "golden parachuted" or shifted to another sinecure. He fucked up, let him find a new bloody job.
The guy responsible for the retarded website policy should have his knuckles rapped. He should have known better, and he's likely caused a lot of extra hassle for the last people in the country who need extra shit right now.
See, if you can't hold bosses responsible for the actions of their subordinates, what the fuck kind of restraints are there on them?
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