Political party websites revisited

Last week I blogged about the poor state of South Africa's political party websites. I just skimmed the surface - the point I was making and which Ian pointed out in his comment, is that with a a month and a half until the municipal elections, none of the big parties - apart from the ANC (more on them later...) - are using their online presence to their advantage. Similar findings were pointed out on ITWeb before the national elections two years ago (thanks again, Ian). In a special "IT in Government" report by Robert Laing - Catching voters with the Net - he writes:

Conspicuously absent on the posters of the parties contesting next week's election are Web site addresses. This is surprising in an era where print adverts for complex products usually act as pointers to more detailed information on the Internet.

Exactly. On route to Cape Town from Still Bay this morning, I must have driven over about three posters lying about in the road. And I don't recall seeing a web address on any that were still withstanding the might of the Cape Doctor, although admittingly I wasn't paying much attention to that ( I'll keep an eye out next time).

One could debate that their most successful public reach isn't via the web, given only 10% of our population are internet users. And despite their shortcomings, the campaign posters are really very influential where branding's concerned. But the web remains the only place I'd go to find out more about a party that interests me. Posters excluded, I haven't been subjected to any other forms of marketing, so what are my options?

And that's the reason I have never voted, I'm ashamed to admit. Not once. The only way I can tell the ID apart from the other parties, is that their leader has breasts and they're branded orange! Their website is really informative, but again they're an exception.

I also raised a question about security after effortlessly gaining access to the DA's content manager and site content. Their website Administrator e-mailed me the following today, which I thought I'd share:

Just a quick note to say thanks for not mucking up the site - I'm sure it was tempting, and I'm also sure some of the less mature hack-freaks out there would have gleefully wreaked havoc – not a good time for it, especially with the elections looming.

Thanks also for bringing the lapse of security to light. We've since fixed the problem and hopefully you’ll find it harder to hack next time round! Given your expertise with websites, we'd appreciate your remarks on ours?

Niki, no problem. But if you're after further advice please enquire about my daily rate - this "hack freak" doesn't come free.

Just to clarify - as a web developer, looking for faults, creative or technical, is just something I do and always have. If I see something I don't like, I write about it. In a constructive light. Usually. The web as a communication medium is still very immature and this is my way of contributing to it's growth. You may see it as a hack attempt, I see it as a duty of habit.

Back to the ANC. Something else I do (ok, so maybe this is slightly hackish of me, but always with good intention) is add a directory path or two to the end of a URL, just to see what's available. Simple URI guesswork, folks. Anyone can do it.

After receiving Niki's e-mail and confirming their security patch, I stumbled on over to the ANC's website again. I tried this with them last week and got somewhere, but received an error and so I stopped there. This time around it worked, and I gained access to their site content. No login required. I'm not sure if the data is used on the site - the datestamps read 2003 - but either way this just emphasizes further what a mess they're in.

I notified them and hopefully they'll take action.