Sorry to say to have to say this Ben
From Bens Terrets Gov 2.0 Blog
Ben Terrett - "The new typeface doesn’t work perfectly everywhere"
To solve this issue I would investigate your teams inability to implement the simplest (And I mean simplest) html, css and web-font tags.
Ben Terrett - "On release the font wasn’t caching on every page, we fixed that yesterday. We told browsers to cache the font so that it doesn’t have to be reloaded on every request Making sure the page only loads the fonts it needs to speed up load times"
This is Web Server / Web Browser interaction 101. Hardly worth blogging about Ben. Has anyone one on your team has ever built a website before?
Ben Terrett - "The hinting stuff is harder to fix but we’re working on that now and you should see improvements with every release over the next few weeks."
I didn't realise that converting are a pre-designed (and pre-hinted) font would require point version releases. When working on projects like this In the past I just went from original paper based design to finished. My employers prefered it this way. No release candidates or anything.
Ben Terrett - "Scaling the default font so that the change when the font loads is less jarring"
Less jarring than web page loading? Sorry Ben but I don't even begin to understand what this "issue" actually is. You changed the font in your stylesheet and then reloaded your web page to find out that…. WOW it looked different? What exactly was your team expecting?
Ben Terrett - "Sending a slightly different version of the font which should render better for Internet Explorer users"
Again html 101. Next time Google "embedding web-fonts into your website for beginners".
"Lots of work still to do – this stuff isn’t simple."
I am sorry to say to have to say this Ben, But it really is that f*@#king simple.
Ben Terrett - "For the first time we’re hosting it ourselves rather than using another service like Typekit or Monotype’s web fonts."
As your team is kind of talentless why not just use Typekit (or any other good online Type vendor)?
From the Typekit website: "Our fonts work everywhere - Typekit works in all modern browsers and operating systems."
That would be a major government problem solved for a measly $8 per month subscription fee wouldn't it?