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Generally, the web sites of the government here are actually quite good. (Incidentally, RTÉ are on that list… of government web sites).

Anyway – the Dáil web site (available at both Dail.ie and Oireachtas.ie), online home of the houses of the Irish government wants to know if you’ve ever visited Leinster House and, if so, what you thought of the experience.

First let me say that I’d like to think that I’m not overly pedantic, don’t complain un-necessarily about petty things and am not a “spelling nazi” – as some may call it. I absolutely understand that many people have problems with spelling, etc. but it’s a different story when a professional organisation is presenting a professional document or web site. You’d expect them to be perfectionists in their work and get the job done to the highest possible level of quality.

see screengrab

It’s a pity then, that the very things that jumps out at me when I look at the Dáil site’s web survey are the very basic and glaringly obvious mis-spellings. It was an extraordinarily simple task for someone to put a short survey web page like this together, yet still they’re asking what you think of the ease of access to Leinster House’s “building and facilitie”, their “secutiry” and your experience of the staff’s “courtesy and respec”.

This is just one example of a clear lack of last-minute pre-release checking (or basic “quality control“) going on on many web sites and publications. I reckon it’s obvious enough what I’ll be filling in, in the comment box at the bottom of the survey after filling it out (”oh the courtesy was GRAND, but the secutiry… the SECUTIRY was woeful!”), although I reckon it’s also obvious it’ll be ignored.