Vrijwel direct nadat Barack Obama de presidentsverkiezingen had gewonnen, is zijn team aan de slag gegaan met de transitieagenda. Dit is de wijze waarop de zittende president de macht overdraagt aan de nieuwe. Obama wordt pas op 20 januari ingezworen, maar hij is al volop bezig. En daarbij maakt hij gretig gebruik van Internet. Continue reading
On December 1 2008, representatives of Dutch state, provincial, waterboard and local government signed a treaty called the National Execution Programme electronic public service. By doing so, they formally committed the entire Dutch government to implementing the Dutch Webguidelines (among other goals). Continue reading
The Dutch government aims to keep their texts simple and clear. This as part of its policy to make its contents accessible without discrimination. In order to achieve this goal, a lot of texts and forms are being reviewed on their complexity and readability, guidelines are created on how to write readable simple texts and a lot of research on text readability is being conducted. Bureau Taal (The Language Agency) has written a very nice booklet on language readability and levels of understanding. Basically, there are 4 levels, with 2 sublevels. A1 being the most simple text, and D2 the most complex. European Research indicated that most government texts are written in C1 and C2 level, while only 15% of the population fully understands those texts.
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