September 17, 2011

"Today we are thrilled to unveil DHS’s new website, StudyintheStates.dhs.gov."

Great moments in government website creation:
Today we are thrilled to unveil DHS’s new website, StudyintheStates.dhs.gov.

It’s with great pleasure that I was fortunate to attend the unveiling of the Study in the States website by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano at the University of Wisconsin – Madison today.

Together with our partner agencies...

You can read more about the Study in the States initiative on the DHS blog.
The crossed-out link in the post title and the "partner" link only trigger a drop-down box that demands a name and password. If you try to go in without the name, you're informed that you lack authorization. All the strikeouts above are on the web page that Janet Napolitano came to Madison yesterday to publicize.

I refrained from attending the big event. But Meade was there and he snapped this pic:

38 comments:

ndspinelli said...

Did she stipulate only photos w/ gel lens? She looks pretty good..maybe she should hire you.

I'm Full of Soup said...

I still don't understand why this is a Homeland Security role. Isn't it Congress' job to amend immigration rules if we want to let in more future terrorists er I mean college students? Then Homeland Security's role would be to enforce those amended rules?

Roger J. said...

I share AJLynch's confusion--I thought the Department of State was involved in signing off of visa apps. DHS was put together awfully fast and I understand overlapping agencies can be involved. Looks like a bureaucraic turf issue to me

Peter V. Bella said...

She really is Big Sister.

Skipper said...

What...no demonstrations, no glitter, no shouting down?

Anonymous said...

This will help U of Wisconsin really get that diverse exclusive group they're hankering for.

They'll be able to extend their holistic admission process well up past Manaus into the Amazon and around the shores of the Bay of Bengal.

How wonderful.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Of course, in big bureacracies, most people don't do their own job because they prefer to butt in and do someone else's job.

Roger J. said...

I dont particularly care for ms N, but I do care about keeping the homeland safe--she appears to have done that. Results matter

I'm Full of Soup said...

If Big Sis is successful and gets more students to stay here, that will create a larger pool of potential NYC cab drivers which will help to keep cab fares down so it's Win-Win!

DADvocate said...

Weird. Why would they post something like that, other than they're incompetent bureaucrats.

AllenS said...

Did she say anything about the lack of people of color in attendance?

Roger J. said...

DAD--you answered your own question :)

John Burgess said...

DHS now assigns officers to countries of particular interest--like Saudi Arabia--to oversee the visa process. Not until a visa applicant's information is passed through all the DC-based filters and gets the on-the-spot DHS person's approval is a visa granted.

This is a result of the fact that the Saudis involved in 9/11 all had valid visas, based on the information database then available to State. State, however, didn't know what was on CIA or FBI databases. Supposedly, DHS became the clearing house for that information.

Leland said...

The agency created after a few foreigners came to The States to learn flying is now encouraging more foreigners to come to The States. Brilliant!

KCFleming said...

They can't make a functioning website (dedicated to innovation and technology), but I'm sure the national healthcare thingy will be a cinch.

John Burgess said...

Oh, there are now 46,000 Saudi students now studying in the US, mostly on Saudi government scholarships.

I think this is a very good thing, though there are the occasional, problematic students.

Roger J. said...

John--that squares with what I thought I knew about DHS role: clearing house

JAL said...

Unveiled behind Closed Doors.


And when is google going to add the strikeout feature for comments?

(Not to mention they have screwed up the comments section again by not showing the wv on the first viewing.
)
But back to Janet and DHS.

Created by the Republican administration, made to order for the left.

Almost Ali said...

Operation Toddler Down:

"The two Transportation Security Administration officers who were charged this week with helping drug traffickers move oxycodone through Palm Beach International Airport are just the latest problem for the agency." Link

They're having a field day.

T J Sawyer said...

Not to be critical, but the link works fine on my browser and the crossed out "partner" link is not a link.

Fred4Pres said...

Wow Meade must have gotten the short straw to go to Big Sis's event.

edutcher said...

I take it the site has Xmas pics of Big Sis and the rest of the Federal Family exchanging Solyndra stock around the Solstice tree.

Fred4Pres said...

Wow Meade must have gotten the short straw to go to Big Sis's event.

It's his punishment for not taking the little woman on his CO vaca.

Mary Beth said...

Bad links - http://sevp1.jersey.adferotest.com/ instead of http://studyinthestates.dhs.gov/ so it shows the admin login. Web design by government workers.

Partners - http://sevp1.jersey.adferotest.com/about/ - should be http://studyinthestates.dhs.gov/about/

Bad links come from not proofreading before going live. I have no idea why it has strikethroughs. I don't see how that is added to the html by accident.

Titus said...

Napolitano looks like she has a dick.

edutcher said...

You noticed!

cubanbob said...

If the DHS was in place on 9/10/01 9/11 would have still happened. The problem was the mindset at the time. The screening technology available then was sufficient to have spotted the terrorist if it had occurred to anyone that box cutters could be used to hijack an aircraft. The lack of sharing information among the agencies was not a technology failure but a failure of the Clinton Administration and it's ideology thanks to Jaime Gorelick. All this carry over incompetence was still in place eight months in to the then new Bush Administration.

As for hijackings, other than in novels, no one ever expected that the planes would be used as manned missiles. United 93 changed that mentality as well. Never again will a hijacked plane be turned in to a guided missile unless the flight crew are the terrorist.

The DHS and the TSA are panic reactions to a situation that will not occur ever again. The website is yet another example of mission creep. The DHS and TSA need to be scrapped. The FBI is capable of doing the background check using the collated information. There is no need for this gigantic waste of money, intrusion on our liberties just to mediate a bitch fight among various agencies.

sorepaw said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
caseym54 said...

The site is up now. Although the strikeouts are still there, the site they lead to functions.

Michael Haz said...

I looked at the photo without wearing my glasses and thought "Barry Alverez is not aging well".

Brian O'Connell said...

Webdev forensics, for those who care:

The domain http://sevp1.jersey.adferotest.com/ suggests that some folks at the "Adfero Group" are responsible for this, though that's just a guess. See http://www.linkedin.com/company/adfero-group, where they claim to integrate "sophisticated digital strategies with traditional communications tactics". Perhaps not quite so sophisticated.

Testing a site at a test url, then having it go-live and have all the links still work is a bit a problem generally. The trick is not to include the domain. But if the client is helping to add content to the test site, stuff can slip by. The domain might have been added by the cms software automatically.

The crossed out links have the class "broken_link" on them, which applies the strikeout, even though some of the links now work. (Some of them still lead to the test site for me.) May be a periodic or one-time process that establishes that.

There's also some weird javascript on that page. FF has a white line dropping down the page. Not ready for prime time.

Why this is a DHS affair- I don't know.

Brian O'Connell said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
DaveO said...

It's the weekend, so don't expect to see it get fixed until Monday. Government employees don't work overtime.

Cincinnatus said...

Typical of Napolitano's incompetence really.

Mark said...

Well, I certainly feel safer now.

wv: "strypt" - about sums it up.

Anonymous said...

Still messed up 12 hours later.

Anonymous said...

The 2nd and 4th links at DHS work; the 1st and the 3rd do not. It's a sneaky IQ test for the foreigners, to sort out the ones Janet Incompetano wants to recruit, as in "Men in Black."

AlanKH said...

The Winklevosses could have developed a better website.

(Sorry, couldn't resist)

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