Wasted Tax Dollars on Useless Flash Websites

Warning: Turn down your computer volume before clicking.  You might want to close your eyes and forget how much you’re paying in taxes, too.

As I just finished writing some rather large checks for my company taxes, I felt like a mini-rant about this site was in order.Â

I’m talking about the Aviation Safety Reporting System (http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/). The site is not only a pain in the ass to use, but makes me angry to see all of the wasted TAX money on useless flamboyance. If we want to look up data, enter data, and use communications tools, why don’t we all take a lesson or two from Edward Tufte or Jakob Nielson and create an efficient, fast, textually driven site appropriate to the purpose.  I do not feel much safer knowing investigators are using this kind of a system to obtain information.

It appears that the old site was revised to be flash-specific. The old site is bad, too - so someone clearly noticed this and got someone to re-do it.  So I’m still trying to understand WHY didn’t they just make it a better data-driven site?  This is one of the worst examples I’ve seen of design gone awry. Unless this was done with volunteer/donation money, I feel robbed!

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