After posting the previous article on Waste of Money, Waste of Electricty, I was thinking of posting it up at the official Government e-engagement site reach.gov.sg, since they mentioned in the recent response to the AIMS recommendation, that the Government will limit their online responses to posts on REACH, and online forums of mainstream newspapers like Straits Times.

I opened my Google Chrome browser, typed in reach.gov.sg  in the address box.  The browser was redirected to http://app.reach.gov.sg/reach/default.aspx, a pale orange bar appears at the top of the page, and that’s it.  The browser’s page-loading icon continued to spin indefitinitely.

Ok, I was thinking maybe it is a browser issue.  Tried Firefox.  Same result.  Maybe Government websites supports only Internet Explorer.  Tried that, and this time even the orange bar does not appear.

I thought maybe it was a problem with some server maintenance, so I gave up.  This morning, I tried it again and the same thing happened on all 3 browsers.

Now it really makes me wonder how would any one be able to provide feedback via REACH, if it is not reachable?

Update: After posting this article, I went back to the browsers, and the REACH website did return, but my Firefox reports that it took 1263.187 seconds (more than 20 mins!!) to load.  Sigh.

Update 2: I proceeded to try to register.  Clicked on the ‘Register’ link and I am presented with another blank page, I am not going to wait another 20 mins for the next page to load.  Guess feeding back via REACH is only for people who has many 20mins to spare.

Update 3: Poll created.

Update 4 on 12 Feb 2009: Looks like it is now ok, after checking back one week later.  Maybe I can start to register and try posting my comment there.

Talk about wisdom of crowds and citizen journalism.  Forget Stomp!, forget omy.sg, NowPublic is the latest kid on the block that allows people to collectively create news reports.  The best part of it is that it is not backed by a Singapore GLC.  Check it out, and you can be a reporter in no time.

Was surfing the web this morning and came across this New Paper article Your profile has broken rules of use.  So it is confirmed that the change in Reach Singapore’s Facebook presence was prompted by my earlier post.

Just would like to say this is good because it closes a loop:

• Government does something wrong (although not a big crime in this case, but still something that is not right)
• Someone points out (acts as a check)
• Government takes action based on evaluation of feedback
• The right thing is done

This might be a small thing, but it truly reflects that kind of Singapore I would like to live in.  Some comments in my earlier blog postings accuse me of nit-picking on small things.  However, if we don’t even feedback and check on the small things, what happens when something really big goes wrong?  There is definitely a need for checks and balances in our system, from the smallest thing like a Facebook profile, to the “big things” like government policies.

There was others who says I am criticizing from a moral high ground instead of feeding back to Reach on this.  I say this is what the Internet is about: someone says something, if it is complete nonsense, it will be forgotten and left to rot on its on; if it makes sense, someone else will pick it up and more people will read about it.  In this case, I am grateful that someone thought my original posting was worthy enough and recommended it to Tomorrow.sg (although a few days after I first posted it), and the editors of Tomorrow.sg decided to publish it, and from there the attention grew.  Eventually enough people got to know about this, and eventually the right people made the corrections.

Isn’t this a wonderful closure of loop that many would like to see in so many of our other suggestions in day-to-day life?

Definitely, the Internet is not an arena where ‘more heat than light is generated’.

I blogged about Reach Singapore’s Facebook profile a few days ago.  Today, it was picked up by tomorrow.sg and I saw quite a number of visitors to my blog.  There is also a small debate at tomorrow.sg about this.

There was a blog that accused me of being rigid and quoted a number of other organisations with Facebook presence, like UNICEF Youth Voice.  Someone responded that the blogger too did not understand, that there is a difference between a User Account (which Reach Singapore’s was), Facebook Groups and Facebook Pages.  Rightfully said, because the violation I mentioned was with the use of a User Account to represent an organisation.  None of the other quoted groups/organisations used a User Account.

Going back to Facebook again to check out Reach Singapore’s profile, I realised that the User Reach Singapore also created a Reach Singapore Facebook Group today.  I was thinking to myself, at least they are pretty fast in responding to feedback, even when the feedback originated from elsewhere on the net.

However, when I refreshed the Reach Singapore User Account profile, I was confused.  The name of the profile was no longer “Reach Singapore”.  It has now become “Ho Chee Har”.

Now there is a small problem here.  What this means is, if you are one of the 300+ people who added “Reach Singapore” as a “friend”, you suddenly have someone you don’t know in your friends’ list.  If you chose the default settings when adding friends, your personal information in Facebook that you shared with your friends will now be available to Ho Chee Har.

This is a small problem because you can always remove Ho Chee Har from your friend’s list.  But it goes back to my original premise: if the platform was understood and the correct tools (Page or Group) were used in the first place, no such problem would have occurred in the first place.

Reach Singapore spent some money to stage an event at Toa Payoh Hub yesterday — to launch a Facebook profile, something that anyone with an email address can set up within minutes at their own home computer.

Attempting to engage the thousands of net savvy Singaporeans already on Facebook is a commendable effort, but before one understands the platform, it is usually not advisable to blow one’s trumpet about it.

If the person who signed up the Facebook profile has actually spent enough time in the Facebook community to understand what Facebook really is and how it works, or if the person has taken the time to read the Terms of Use, it would be apparent that the Reach Singapore profile has violated the Facebook’s terms of use.

Quoting from Facebook’s Terms of Use:

In addition, you agree not to use the Service or the Site to:

register for more than one User account, register for a User account on behalf of an individual other than yourself, or register for a User account on behalf of any group or entity;

Think about the money spent and the media coverage on the new Reach Singapore profile, I wonder what happens when Facebook discover this violation and terminates the account.

Update 2008-07-01: Tomorrow.sg link:http://tomorrow.sg/archives/2008/06/30/reach_singapore_violates_faceboo.html