Comments on: Let’s complain like it’s 1998

By: Josh

Josh — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:16:45 +0000

To be fair, I would say it’s more 2002 than 1998.

For comparison, here is the White House web site in 1998:
http://web.archive.org/web/19980215014716/http://www3.whitehouse.gov/

And in 2002:
http://web.archive.org/web/20020707070731/http://www.whitehouse.gov/

They do have all those snazzy photos of the Ombudsman though, in both low and high rez versions.

By: Julien Frisch

Julien Frisch — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:30:27 +0000

Oh, I didn’t realise the change. Indeed, when I wrote my article, the website looked as it looks on your image. So they have made an effort to update from 1996 to 1998…

By: Jon

Jon — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:01:19 +0000

He’s actually quite a pleasant guy – I met him a couple of years ago.

But I’ve just been told that the current site is actually NEW! This is what it used to look like:

By: Julien Frisch

Julien Frisch — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:58:26 +0000

My words:

http://julienfrisch.blogspot.com/2008/10/boring-european-ombudsman-and-his-2007.html

“I should also remark that the website of the Ombudsman is of quite low quality, and although this might be less important than his actual work, the presentation is not very inviting. An institution that is meant to be a link between citizens and the EU institutions should however be much interested in raising interest in its work; it should be inviting and display openness to the “outside world” (i.e. “outside” the self-referential institutional copse of the EU).

But apparently, either the budget or the imagination do not allow more.

In short: Not much from our Ombudsman. He is working, he is handling cases, but he is not interesting for me as a citizen – and does not seem to be interested in raising my attention.”