Take Charge

It’s 2012 and the web today is undisputedly the world’s biggest platform. Over the past two decades most things about the web has changed — be it the utility, the technologies, or even the interfaces.

Sadly most Indian Government institutions are still sleeping in the past, their websites appear to be totally aloof about these changes— directionless, heartless and a pain for the users. All of us have have cribbed about it at least once in our past. Many around us express their annoyance about this everyday.

We think it’s high time to be the change. It’s time to show the community, the Government and the people at large how you think these websites should be shaped going forward.

• We ♥ HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Please submit solutions that render best on a browser, not in Photoshop, not in Fireworks, not in Flash, not as an image.
• Compatibility with the latest versions of Chrome and Firefox should do. Compatibility with IE is not a must. This is a test of your engineering and design skills, not a test of browser workaround expertise.
• Feel free to use any CSS/JavaScript frameworks/libraries that make your work easier.
• Do not use any resources that you do not have rights for. This applies as much to photos and graphics as it does to code.
• Entries should be purely front-end and not have any dependency on the server or server-side technologies.
• Please limit your team size to a maximum of 3 people.

You will own your design and code, and will be under no obligation to license to anyone for free or otherwise.

We are speaking with various departments listed above to draw their attention to your designs. Policy analysts, technologists and data enthusiasts who have worked with the government are helping us find the right people and vendors. However, getting these deployed is not our goal.

Our hope is that these designs will be catalysts for:

• A design rethink in Government organisations.
• A demand from the citizens for better solutions.
• Inspiring the country's budding designers to pursue Government organisations by translating the full potential of the home page redesign to the entire site.