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New Hungarian Government OMGs All Gov Sites 59

Posted by samzenpus from the they-forgot-the-ponies dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The new Hungarian government chose to replace the home pages with a 'disclaimer' page on several governmental websites such as ministries or the Foreign Office. The title and the main message is 'OMG,' which is followed by an explanation that the inherited websites 'lack any kind of uniform structure' and this is 'unworthy of Hungary.' Today is the takeover day in most ministries for the new administration."

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New Hungarian Government OMGs All Gov Sites More

New Hungarian Government OMGs All Gov Sites

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  • I mean like 2 months ago?!

    • You would think, but this is /., and more to the point, idle on /. so I imagine for those who post to idle, April Fool's Day is never over. Never.

    • I mean like 2 months ago?!

      Yeah, but today is the day that the new government (elected in April) run by Fidesz takes over control of government ministries from the old MSzP-SzDSz coalition. So it will be interesting to see whether they actually quickly get useful information on to those sites or whether this is just an attempt to limit access to embarrassing data (Fidesz is more than a bit nationalistic). I suspect that this is an honest attempt to transition to presenting information more clearly, but I wouldn't be too surprised if I were wrong.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by sourcerror ( 1718066 )

        or whether this is just an attempt to limit access to embarrassing data

        WTF? You mean FIDESZ wants to cover up the previous government's failure?

        • or whether this is just an attempt to limit access to embarrassing data

          WTF? You mean FIDESZ wants to cover up the previous government's failure?

          As I said, this is not what I'm betting on. But if asked to speculate in this area, suppose that a government website had information on poverty among Gypsies. That might be the kind of thing that the new government may not wish to emphasize.

          There is another things as well. Fidesz will have to implement enormous and extremely painful budget cuts. If the MSzP run sites had bragged about social programs and how many people they helped, Fidesz may well want those squirreled away.

          But on the whole, I take th

          • "As I said, this is not what I'm betting on. But if asked to speculate in this area, suppose that a government website had information on poverty among Gypsies. "

            The KSH (Central Statistical Office) site isn't affected.

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by Charles Dodgeson ( 248492 )
              And I've overlooked something very important. There is a link on the bottom of the OMG pages that takes people to the regular sites. Nothing has been removed. This stuff is just an intro page.
      • I wouldn't be surprised if the former is more correct than the later. Remember: These websites and domain names where bought and produced originally under the last Fidesz government, and Fidesz does want to make sure that their 'Truth' is presented. Not to say that the last government coalition presented their own 'truth'. It is just with Magyars, the truth is how they perceived it and that is all. Take a look at their media, for example.

  • Better OMG than OGC (Score:4, Funny)

    by rwa2 ( 4391 ) * on Tuesday June 01, 2010 @08:49AM (#32417718) Homepage Journal

    From the inadvertently bad logo competition some time ago.

    OGC

    (Turn your head sideways to the left if you don't see the little wanker)

    • I can see Lisa Simpson in the 2012 Olympics logo (http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1239/533084139_223aa08fb6.jpg). I can sort of see Boba Fett in the N in the ESPN logo (http://blogbeckett.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/espn.jpg), but I think a doink in OGC is kind of a stretch :)
    • I forget, is OMG a subsidiary of Ontario Mega Finance Group? Silly Canadians, Hungery is for europeans.

  • What does OMG stand for in Hungarian then

  • One area where web changeovers fail nowadays is in redirecting old URLs to new ones. Web services and web design are not taught anywhere anymore and the skills are fading. Nonetheless, it is possible for any competent web administrator to deploy >a href="http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite to point both users and search engines to the new pages.

  • Judging by the "OMG" page... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by John Hasler ( 414242 ) on Tuesday June 01, 2010 @09:07AM (#32417930) Homepage

    ...the new policy will be that all text shall be in 2 point type.

  • Seriously?

    http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Agov.hu

  • .... should follow Hungary's lead. Imagine a bunch of websites designed by a high school computer class which has just learned how to use Flash.

  • Honestly, this is ridiculous. A new administration takes over, and suddenly half of the web infrastructure of Hungary is "unworthy"? So they're going to spend gazillions of dollars to change something that worked, to make the previous administration look incompetent? This kind of pettiness hurts the very people it is supposed to serve. Whoever took this decision has clearly been promoted far beyond what his skill and intelligence will ever deserve.

    • Re:Talk about a stupid pissing contest (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SharpFang ( 651121 ) on Tuesday June 01, 2010 @10:42AM (#32419170) Homepage Journal

      Are you a hungarian?
      Can you authoritatively say the old sites did work?

      Outdated information with no hint that it is outdated is worse than none at all.
      Sinkhole email address, where letters from people are never read, placed next to a snailmail address is worse than no email at all, just snailmail.
      Information, from which most -just- got out of date (because it's about the government, and the government just changed) needs to be changed ASAP. If there are no uniform procedures what and where needs to be changed, it's better to disable anything that is suspected of being out of date than allow the old (mis)information stay online.
      If a website is in violation of laws - say, data retention laws, it should not be left to perpetrate the violation until corrective mechanisms are in place.

      Sometimes no news is good news...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Chryana ( 708485 )

        I agree with everything you said. However, I don't see any other government putting OMG on its front page and calling the old website "unworthy". Maybe the old site were bad, but I don't think you have any more authority than I do to say so, and I think the whole thing could have been done in a much more proper way, saying the sites are down for maintenance and such, instead of implying the previous administration was incompetent and making them look bad. The takeover was supposedly today, it seems unlikely

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Charles Dodgeson ( 248492 )

          First of all, we've all been operating under the incorrect assumption that the prior content is down. It isn't down. There's a link at the bottom of the OMB page that takes you to the old site. So there is nothing really pernicious here (just bad design)

          This "unworthy" business is an attempt to humiliate the previous government and plays into the tone of the campaign. Considering that Fidesz won so overwhelmingly in the elections, they could afford to be more gracious now. But no doubt they want to co

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by grin ( 557894 )

        I am Hungarian, and I authoritatively say they did (do) work.

        I have used many of them in my daily work, and while I agree that they were not perfect, and often outdated, still served their purpose rather well. Defacing them with a low quality remark, even if officially, is not very government-like behaviour. (It's like replacing the webpage of the parliament by a text "hahaha this site sucks! --regards, your new government". Childish.)

        Either replace the sites with an objective explanation (which would

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