I have written about the problem of Bulgaria’s e-government being largely monolingual before in this column, but it seems that awareness of the problem has now reached the top of state administration.
And they’re set to do something about it, or at least that is the talk.
State Administration Minister Nicolai Vasilev was, on a recent visit to the south Bulgarian town of Kardjali, quoted by Bulgarian-language daily Dnevnik as saying that municipalities that do not have an English-language version of their website by the end of this year would be fined. The daily did not provide any further context for the quote.
As it turns out, one of the projects currently in progress under the operative programme Administrative Capacity, goes by the somewhat lengthy title of The Creation of a Modern and Uniform Vision of Bulgarian State Administration in the Context of the Country’s EU Membership (Създаване на модерна и унифицирана визия на българската държавна администрация в контекста на членството на страната в Европейския съюз) or CMUVBSACCEUM for short. Hiding behind this monstrosity of a title is an idea that actually makes a lot of sense.
Various levels of state administration have created more than 600 sites so far without a single form of standardisation, leading to an almost inaccessible jungle in which even the most seasoned e-administrators would lose their way. It is this standardisation that CMUVBSACCEUM intends to introduce.
Besides standardised requirements for use of logo’s, graphics, type-face and so on, CMUVBSACCEUM aims to introduce something known outside government circles as corporate identity, “accessibility to information for disabled people and foreigners” [sic], the project description reads.
The good news is that CMUVBSACCEUM would not be limited to municipal websites, but include all levels of Bulgaria’s e-government, ministry spokespersons said.
It seems that an exact list of the languages to be made mandatory in the websites has not been drafted so far. Languages mentioned by ministry spokespersons for inclusion were German and French.
Questions as to why only large West-European languages would be included and why Turkish, a language that 10 per cent of Bulgarians consider their native language, was excluded, were answered by the spokesperson, replying Turkish might be considered for inclusion “because there is quite a bit of interest from our southern neighbours in our country.”
As much as it can be applauded that the issue is being dealt with, government should consider who it is serving in the first place with its e-government initiatives. Should it not assign higher priority to languages spoken by its own ethnic minorities for whom Bulgarian is not the first language, followed by the languages of the country’s immediate neighbours, instead of trying to appease the three largest language groups in the block?
This strategy would surely find support in European policies of diversity and minority politics, and the EU’s strive for increased stability, cross-border cooperation and prosperity in the region.
The project would also need to address quality standards for languages it intends to mandate. Currently, most e-government sites that indicate the availability of English using animated British or American-flags, provide little information in English and often only display an “under construction” or a permanent “coming soon” text.
Even if information is available in English, it is seldom complete or outdated. At the time of writing this column, the Foreigner Act in English, available from the website of the Interior Ministry (1), has been updated to include amendments published in the State Gazette of April 6 2007. The Bulgarian version, available from the same website, includes amendments from April 6 2007, along with those of June 29 2007, August 3 2007, December 20 2007, February 8 2008, March 7 2008 and March 14 2008. With information so out-of-date, one might as well not provide any translation at all.
Lastly, the issue of accessibility for disabled people that CMUVBSACCEUM intends to address. This should be, pretty much, a no-brainer. The European Union adopted its e-accessibility standards in 2002 (2), while the US introduced its section 508 of the Disabilities Act (3) as early as 1998.
A full decade later, the only thing Bulgaria has to do is take the best of both worlds. The worst thing that could happen would be for this part of the project to make notices on every Bulgarian e-government website, saying, “best viewed in Internet Explorer”.
1. http://www.mvr.bg/NR/rdonlyres/8C3CCC42-3E72-4CBB-900A-E8CB6DE82CAD/0/ZVPNRBGESChTS_EN.pdf
2. http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/accessibility/z-techserv-web/com_wa2001/
3. http://www.section508.gov
