UK Licensing Site Requires MSIE Emulation, But Won't Work With MSIE

Anne Thwacks writes The British Government web site for applying for for a licence to be a security guard requires a plugin providing Internet Explorer emulation on Firefox to login and apply for a licence. It won't work with Firefox without the add-on, but it also wont work with Internet Explorer! (I tried Win XP and Win7 Professional). The error message says "You have more than one browser window open on the same internet connection," (I didn't) and "to avoid this problem, close your browser and reopen it." I did. No change.

I tried three different computers, with three different OSes. Still no change. I contacted their tech support and they said "Yes ... a lot of users complain about this. We have known about it since September, and are working on a fix! Meanwhile, we have instructions on how to use the "Fire IE" plugin to get round the problem." Eventually, I got this to work on Win7pro. (The plugin will not work on Linux). The instructions require a very old version of the plugin, and a bit of trial and error is needed to get it to work with the current one. How can a government department concerned with security not get this sort of thing right?"

Comments

Its like normal web development, but worse

[MichaelSmith]

Welcome to government procurement.

Re:Its like normal web development, but worse

[ShanghaiBill]

I can tell you it's not government but incompetence.

For private companies, bankruptcy puts a ceiling on the amount of incompetence that can be tolerated. For government, there is no limit.

It's quite simple really...

[Malfuros the Wizard]

The people who developed the site are idiots... I was working with a client recently and discovered they had a problem with a web site they had to use. They were on IE11 and the web site only works with IE9 and I really do mean IE9 and nothing else. The service provider tech support said the solution was they would have to uninstall IE11 and then install IE9 Idiots, there is no other way of describing it, utter idiots. There is no good excuse for a website not to work in all major browsers, it really is that simple but then I'm just a guy who has to make sure the websites he develops work properly in order to get paid, these companies that provide websites for government departments at costs of millions or billions can get away with stupid shit like this because of the contracts they create.

Re:It's quite simple really...

[nospam007]

"Apologies for the wall of text btw, Slashdot mangles my posts for some reason even though I type them out with line breaks."

You need to use the IE emulation extension in Firefox for it to work.

Re:Isn't Government wonderful?

[DamonHD]

Uh no, sadly.

For example, Vodafone's "Mobile Broadband" dongles have apparently failed to work with OS X Yosemite (ie the current version) for a similar length of time for me and many others (the software crashes immediately) and Vodafone's 3rd-line tech support admits there is no fix (the person I spoke to is a Mac user himself and was rather embarrassed), but apparently Vodafone is happy to go on charging for the service and deflecting efforts to get a resolution.

eg http://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5...

So, although I have been a generally happy customer for most of Vodafone's existence I think, in this aspect they share all the aspects of incompetence that certain people assume to be the sole preserve of government.

I cancelled service and a refund is very very slowly happening. (Vodafone gives you a credit but somehow fails to apply it to the account, as a matter of routine, so goes on taking new money.)

Rgds

Damon

Re: Isn't Government wonderful?

[Anonymous Coward]

This government is evil perspective is just an effect of brainless propaganda mostly from the land of the free. In reality the bigger the organisation the bigger its problems with efficiency. This does not mean there are no well done government projects nor daoes it mean all private enterprise is perfect. This seems to be a general problem with black and white vision not only techie weirdos have. I like simple b&w approach too, it makes life 'easier'.

Pure Genius!

[Required Snark]

First, they are applying security through obscurity. Since it's pre-broken, only those who can think out of the box will be able to apply.

Second, it's a great way to screen applicants. Only those who are truly adept and motivated will get through this barrier to entry.

I think this is the wave of the future. Employers can put up broken application sites and only look at the candidates that can figure it out. They don't even have to spend much to make it bad in the first place. Just outsource it to the lowest bidder, preferably in a country with a different language. Heck, have them do it in their native language and then apply some cheap ass internationalization package.

All this needs is a catchy name that sounds cool like "scrum" or "cloud scale" and it will become the next big thing. There will be certificate programs in whatever it's called and "Whatever it's called for Dummies". Wired and the Wall Street Journal will write articles. Hop on that bandwagon now and make those big bucks!

This is to make sure the only ones who can apply..

[ks9208661]

... are people who still use PCs from the 90s, most likely from Eastern Europe, so UKIP can continue complaining about foreigners stealing jobs away from the Brits.