New Government Grants System Only for Microsoft Windows

Wow, thanks federal government. The new grants.gov system which is designed to consolidate grant programs government-wide into a single electronic application system only works if you’re using Microsoft Windows.

Mike Atassi, program manager for Grumman’s Grants.gov system integration team and an avowed fan of Macintosh computers, said the choice of PureEdge was logical given that the contract demanded full implementation within seven months and because more than 90 percent of computer users nationwide use PCs.

The article goes on to point out that in science and academia, far fewer people use Windows. The article concentrates on Macs, but I bet there are a lot of Unix and Linux boxes out there also. I know in my old computer science department most of the professors only had DECstations on their desk.

So, anyway, their excuse is they only had seven months. Does that make sense to anyone? If you’re building a web-based system and you’re on a short timeframe, how about not adding in unecessarily complicated stuff that’s going to restrict you to one operating system? A very basic web site that’s put together quickly shouldn’t be trying to do ActiveX or whatever kind of junk that site wants to do.

And this is the new, improved, government-wide system. The NSF already had an electronic application system that was platform-agnostic, but because the government is consolidating on the new one, they abandoned that and went to this new, untested, flawed one. At least give it some more testing before jumping into it; people were reporting all kinds of problems and issues even on PCs.

The government’s recommendation? PC emulation software like VMware. Naturally, people aren’t big fans of going through that much hassle just to use a web site. Their also worried about exposing their virtual machines to viruses and spyware and all the other stuff that Windows users have to deal with.

By the way, why is it that 99.9% of all free, non-profit web sites out there (take this one for example) work just fine with all operating systems, but the $22 miillion one that our tax dollars are paying for is limited to Windows? What ever happened to the government’s 503 requirements about making sure all web sites are accessible to people with disabilities? It would be funny if grants.gov was fully 503-compliant and accessible, but only if you were disabled and running Windows. You blind Mac users don’t count.

Or maybe that’s a loophole. Maybe someone can force them to fix it just because of the blind Mac users. They can complain that the site is discriminating against the disabled because they can’t view it.

When the Fake Rake starts to give out grants, I’ll lock the web app down so it only lets in some wierdly obscure fraction of users. Isn’t there a web browser for the Commodore 64 now? That’ll be it. If you’re filing a grant application from a Commodore 64, you really deserve my money.