IE6 support costs taxpayers millions
A recent petition to the government to encourage departments to upgrade from the antiquated IE6 was rebuffed on the grounds of cost, but fails to take into account the current costs of ensuring new websites are compatible.
The petition points out that IE6 has many security issues, is due to be retired in 2014, and other governments have warned their citizens not to use it. Even Microsoft advises its users to upgrade. The Government’s response points out the massive costs of testing and upgrading thousands of users’ desktops and specific applications which are only compatible with IE6 - which is of course a very valid point.
However, it doesn’t take into account the huge extra costs of developing websites which are compatible with IE6 - not for the citizens they are serving, of whom virtually no one uses IE6 (total UK usage of IE6 is currently 3.7% and shrinking) but purely to allow their own staff to see their sites.
COI guidelines say new sites should be tested in browsers which have more than 2% of users: take UK Government staff out of the current 3.7% figure and I’m sure the total would easily slip below the magic 2%. In other words, as long as it’s on their desktop machines, the Government’s support for IE6 is self perpetuating.
We have done a fair amount of work for the public sector over recent years, many of which, including a major departmental rebuild, had to be IE6 compatible so the organisation’s staff could see it properly.
While it may sound trivial to many people (it’s very easy to toss “must work in IE6” into a specification), and many may think it is just web developers having a moan, IE6 compatibility is a very real problem which is like a black hole sucking in development and testing time. I’d estimate it takes up 15-20% of development time and cost. Multiply that by the amount the government spends on website design and build (£22.6m in 09-10, according to figures released by the COI), and you get a back-of-envelope calculation of up to £4.52m per year to support IE6. And that only includes the largest 40 government sites - there’s a long tail of other public sector sites such as the NHS, local councils and quangoes which will equally be spending a fortune on satisfying what is now a niche piece of technology.
It makes the cost of upgrading the public sector’s desktops, which is an inevitability at some point in the next four years anyway, due to Microsoft’s retirement of Windows XP / IE6, seem like excellent value.
I expect that when we begin to list IE6 compatibility as a separate item on quotes, demand for it will drop significantly.
In the meantime, a simple, low cost and backwards compatible solution would be to install more modern browsers on users’ desktops for general web browsing, and limit IE6 specifically to those internal applications which require it. This would not only make their staff more productive and secure, but in these times of austerity, save the taxpayer a vast amount of money.
