Why the federal government will never understand the Internet.

I was just looking at a federal internship program just now for my new firm. With the right program, we’d be able to help a student get a headstart in the emerging media space in return for 75% of their wages covered by the government.

But, as usual with many federal government web sites, the layers of redundant clicks and processes is mind-boggling.

Check out what happens when you try to apply for the program.

Step One

• Click the “Application Form” link.
• Gives you the choice of downloading a PDF form, another PDF that’s a “guide” to the form, and seeing an HTML page with locations of where to send the form. (Okay, first… PDF forms?! Still?! You know, web pages can handle forms on their own. And how about putting all that info in a single document?)

Step Two

• I select the “Form” link, and you get a page with a single link on it: “Request this document.” Well, that’s what I was doing when I clicked on the link!! It’s like every time you click a result link in Google, it gives you an intermediate page with just a link on it that says “Go to this site.” Well, duh!
• I clicked the link and did I get the form? There’s no way to download the form — you have to give them your email address.

Step Three

• This is where it gets absolutely stupid. The feds then send this email: “Confirmation of receipt. Thank you for submitting a document request.  We would like to confirm that we have received your request. The document you have requested will be sent in a separate message to this e-mail address shortly.”
• Then, literally one second later, they send the document in a separate email.

I tried to link to these pages directly, but the site prevented me from doing that¹.

Honestly, are the programmers there trained at some other school? Only on government web sites do I see this kind of nonsensical user-interface insanity.

Am I missing something?

1. it uses a unique URL for each site visitor; if I gave you the one I used, it would have timed out by the time you got there and barfed on you [↩]