Common Look and Feel

The Government of Canada’s Common Look and Feel (CLF) standard is defined by the Chief Information Officer Branch (CIOB) of the Treasury Board Secretariat and evaluated through the "Effectiveness of Information Technology Management"^[1] element of the Management Accountability Framework (a balanced score-card approach to measuring management practices across all federal departments and agencies).

This standard governs branding, usability & accessibility standards for government departments on the internet.

In 2000, the Canadian CLF 1.0 standard was implemented and government departments had almost two years to make their sites compliant.

In 2007, the Canadian CLF standard was revised and a 2.0 version was released.^[2] Organizations were given two years to comply.

This standard comprises the following four elements^[2]:

• Part 1: Standard on Web Addresses - i.e. tbs-sct.gc.ca
• Part 2: Standard on the Accessibility, Interoperability and Usability of Web sites - ie.^[3]
• Part 3: Standard on Common Web Page Formats
• Part 4: Standard on Email

Future

With various concerns having been raised over problems created by the CLF requirements,^[4][5] future versions^[6] of the standard may see significant changes.^[7]

The CLF 2.0 standard is being updated to:

• take into account the most recent version of internationally accepted Web content accessibility guidelines;
• increase flexibility of Website layout and design;
• enable institutions to incorporate the use of innovative and emerging technologies to their online information and services.

References

1. ^ http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/maf-crg/indicators-indicateurs/2009/stewardship-gerance/stewardship-gerance-eng.asp
2. ^ ^{a b} "Common Look and Feel for the Internet 2.0". Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/clf2-nsi2/index-eng.asp. Retrieved 2010-03-22. 
3. ^ WCAG 1.0
4. ^ "Everyone hates CLF". http://usability4government.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/everyone-hates-clf/. Retrieved 2010-03-23. 
5. ^ "Thoughts on CLF 3.0 From Outside the Firewall...". 2010-03-21. http://ampli2de.com/uxblog/index.php?itemid=40. Retrieved 2010-03-23. 
6. ^ "Common Look and Feel for the Internet is being updated". 2010-06-02. http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/clf2-nsi2/12msg-eng.asp. Retrieved 2010-03-23. 
7. ^ Thomas J Bradley (2009-08-27). "A Proposal for CLF 3.0". http://thomasjbradley.ca/blog/proposal-for-clf-3. Retrieved 2010-03-23. 

External links

• A CLF community space
• CSE HTML Validator for Windows with Canadian CLF 2.0 checking