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e-GIF Management Committee Summary 15 November 2005

1. e-GIF Manager’s Report and Web Guidelines Report

The Committee members agreed that in order for a website to achieve compliance, it would have to be 100% compliant with the Web Guidelines.
It was agreed that there will be All agencies that cannot meet the 1 January 2006 deadline. Agencies are expected to self-audit their websites and report back to SSC by 30 April 2006. These reports will provide a baseline review of compliance across the mandated Government Agencies.
The Committee accepted the e-GIF Manager’s report.
The Committee accepted the Web Guidelines Report.
The e-GIF Management Committee agreed that where specific types of documents existed, such as maps (see Section 2 below) the LINZ exemption request to the Web Guidelines should be granted. The Committee approved the LINZ exemption request in full in the following sub sections of their site www.linz.govt.nz: Hydrographic, Topographic and High Country Leases sub-sections where PDF, JPEG and TIFF resources are used.

The committee agreed that where Agencies are unable to convert non-compliant website content from PDF to HTML for the following situations:

Photos and Maps
Documents authored and owned by third parties
Documents where there are legal requirements to provide it in a specific format; and

Where those agencies can:

Provide text descriptions of images (i.e. someone who can’t see an image should still get the information that someone who can see the image will get);
Provide an HTML paragraph that describes the key messages of the document;
Provide or link the page to a “contact us” or contaxt X so the user can make contact with a person to ask if there are alternative mechanisms they could use to obtain the information they seek (which was only available in PDF);
Provide a disclaimer on that particular web page or on the home page. Be upfront that the information is only available in PDF but there is an alternative mechanism – and state what that mechanism is;
Offer “on demand” conversion where possible, therefore reducing risks and costs associated with converting unnecessarily.

The Agency is deemed to be compliant.

The committee accepted the verbal report from Laurence Millar on the outcome of his meeting with Warren Tucker, Chair, and Mark Prebble, State Services Commissioner. The following request was noted:

That a set of criteria would assist in measuring the success of the e-GIF Programme. Such measures would include “good news” stories that should be catalogued and disseminated.

Online content that the National Library did not produce and does not own the copyright to that it is committed to preserve.
Third-party publications only available in an original source of PDF.
Multimedia content received from the original publisher that must remain in its original source file formats such as Flash and other video and sound formats.

as special-purpose documents.

The Committee approved a twelve-month exemption for complying with the Web Guidelines on the agreement that the National Library would outline a programme of work that can be achieved within the timeframe. The National Library to provide a report on progress in September 2006.
The Committee agreed that it set a precedent where this Committee will give a time bound exemption on a case-by-case basis where a clear case has been made for such an exemption.

The Authentication Data Standards are ready for public consultation.
The Committee members requested that the Standards and the Guidelines to the Standards were clearly separated.

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