I have to admit that for a long time I've been a blog skeptic.
Who actually sits down at their computer to read someone else's personal journal?
I think this has been one of the barriers I had towards blogging myself - I felt that I'd get better mileage out of talking ideas through with individuals face-to-face, or speaking at conferences, which I try to do a couple of times each year.
However I've seen decent growth in the readership of my own blog, which 'lives' within quite a niche topic in the weeks - not months - it has been live. It is already reaching 80 or more individuals each day.
The top blogs in Australia and the US are now close to rivaling the level of readership of print publication transplanted to the web.
Taking a quick look around the web, I've seen some compelling figures on the number of internet users accessing blogs, such as from Forrester, who published the following table in their Groundswell report.
If you consider that Australia is more like Britain, but has touches of the US, lets say that around 14% of our online population read blogs at least once a month.
Based on an internet using adult population of 13 million, that's roughly 1.7 million people per month, as of a year ago (Q2 2007).
Those figures may not light up your world, but I find them fairly impressive given that blogs only really became reality around 10 years ago.
More recent figures are even more impressive.
In Charlene Li's blog there's a great video interview talking more about various approaches being taken by companies. Charlene is a co-writer of Groundswell and one of Forrester's lead analysts on the topic of social media).
There's also a social media profiling tool where you can review engagement by demographic group - including for Australia. The difference between under 35 years and over is profound.
I've been so impressed with the work done by Forrester in this area that I'm buying copies of the book, Groundswell, for our senior executive team.
So are you blogging yet?
Monday, June 30, 2008
Who reads blogs anyway? |
Social media initiatives at my agency - what is your agency doing? |
Part of my interest in social media at the moment is related to how I'm encouraging its use within our agency.
I'm very interested in hearing about what other agencies are doing.
At work we have a team rolling out a community of practice using a wiki-based system, with an extranet to follow. I hope to replicate this for other areas of the business that could benefit from such a system.
We have a rating/comment system being implemented into our intranet to further help content authors and the intranet management team (part of my team) understand where our content requires significant improvement to meet staff needs. It's not quite social media, but it's a step towards it.
After our major 1 July deadline we will be documenting a strategy and approach for internal blogs and forums, with the support of our Internal Communications team - then hopefully introducing the enabling tools with ICT's assistance.
We are also preparing to engage more actively in public online discussions around our agency and its services, in a measured and structured manner. Around this I'm looking seriously at whether we should introduce online participation principles, as has occurred in the UK.
We have initial plans, with some buy-in from our Media group, to trial the enhancement of our media releases to make it easier to get them into Digg and Reddit, and potentially deliver them via Twitter or similar tools.
Finally I'm encouraging the members of my team (currently spread across several states) to make use of appropriate tools to aid contact and collaboration. Phone and email work reasonably well for us, however I want to explore how we can further improve engagement in a less interruptive way. Over time I'd love to extend this to other areas as appropriate - I'm already aware of more than 60 Facebook and Linkedin users in the agency, so the grassroots growth is already occurring.
If your agency has any social media initiatives underway that others could learn from, please let me know
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Sneak peak at Google Ad Planner |
Last week I discussed how Google was preparing to announce the release of it's new Ad Planner tool.
It's now available in beta with selected Google customers and an Ad Planner sneak peak is available online, with an image of the interface which demonstrates how the tool can segment site reach by demographics including gender, age, education, location and income.
The tool enables marketers and PR professionals to get a clearer picture of the demographics of different websites to aid them in effective communications and advertising targeting.
It also enables effective planning of online media buys, either through setting reach goals or media mix.
Does this remove the need for media buyers?
Certainly not yet - however I believe Google is gradually disintermediating this group as it moves further into television, radio and print advertising alongside its online search cash cow.
Useful introductory resources for social media |
I'm on a bit of a social media kick this weekend due to all the fantastic resources I've found on the topic in the last several days.
I wanted to flag a couple of these in particular that I found useful, and may be useful for others.
My first great find was a CIO magazine article from May this year, Enterprise 2.0 - What is it good for? (A 12-step guide to getting the most out of Web 2.0 tools and making it safe-for-purpose).
This article provides a good step-by-step approach to getting your toes wet in the social media space, starting with creating a Web 2.0 strategy, getting buy-in from all Senior Management (as it's not simply a technology decision), establishing ownership, developing appropriate policies, monitoring and response times.
The seond resource was the Cook & Hopkins Social Media Report - 3rd edition.
As a free online resource this is an enormously valuable tool for establishing a basic understanding of some of the social media options out there. If you're new to the area, or need to provide information to someone who is, this resource can provide a good starting point.
Anyone still going viral? |
I remember viral advertising being the flavour of the month a few years ago.
Every ad agency out there was touting the concept - create some tool, video or website that would capture the popular imagination and create enormous online 'word-of-mouth' at a low cost.
However when it came to execution, it was very hard to create a viral ad. No-one could accurately pick what would fly and what would bomb.
These days I don't see the word tossed around very often - everyone, including me, is talking social media.
However that doesn't invalidate viral marketing.
If you can create that buzz, the approach still works. The challenge is in the buzz (which this BMW ad has managed to create).
I've not seen much in the way of innovative government advertising for some time - not since the ten-pin bowling grim reaper - The reaper can still be viewed online at YouTube and has been featured on The Chaser. The original ad was created over twenty years ago.
Does this reflect the difficulty of creating viral ads? Or the loss of creativity in government advertising?
Have you seen any online advertising lately you just had to pass on to at least one friend?
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Mid-point - Australian egovernment strategy - how's your agency tracking? |
I'm very interested in receiving comments on how different government departments and agencies are tracking towards meeting the goals of the 2006 e-Government Strategy (which runs to 2010).
We're close to the midpoint and I've not seen much in the way of progress reporting.
Background for those unfamiliar - the 2006 e-Government Strategy, Responsive Government: A New Service Agenda outlined four main goals in its vision for 2010:
- To meet user needs
- Connected service delivery
- Value for money
- Public sector capacity (to deliver on the other goals)
There are a number of challenges to delivery of the strategy across government, and it would be interesting to understand how various agencies are meeting these.
Make government data freely available |
An interesting article was released in the Yale Journal of Law & Technology earlier this year discussing a view that government should focus on providing usable data online rather than full-blown websites.
Titled Government Data and the Invisible Hand , the premise was quite simply explained in the abstract:Rather than struggling, as it currently does, to design [web ]sites that meet each end-user need, we argue that the executive branch should focus on creating a simple, reliable and publicly accessible infrastructure that exposes the underlying data. Private actors, either nonprofit or commercial, are better suited to deliver government information to citizens and can constantly create and reshape the tools individuals use to find and leverage public data.
This approach is very much at odds with the current approach both in the US and Australia, where in most cases the respective governments provide both the data and all the interpretation designed to meet the needs of specific audiences.
Via the current approach, data can becomes difficult to extract, or is presented in a way that is not useful. On that basis these websites are difficult to use. They are also expensive to develop and maintain and difficult to keep current.
The approach in practice
I've encountered both approaches in Australian government websites.
In a past role, managing the website for a private sector water and energy utility, one of the consistently most trafficked areas of our website was local weather. This section had only a peripheral involvement with the main focus of the site, however the level of usage made it important to retain.
We did not run this weather service ourselves. Instead we used a raw data feed provided by the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) for free. The data was simply customised and represented in an attractive way in our website.
Ours was not the only organisation using this data - a number of other organisations had built businesses though providing weather information - sometimes combined with video, maps, commentary or other feeds. These sites collectively attracted more traffic than the BOM itself.
To my recollection, provided this data was not packaged and directly resold commercially, the BOM had a policy of giving away the data freely.
This approach helped ensure that the public were able to access accurate information, to the public good. It is important to note that BOM data was collected and processed by people and equipment already paid for out of the public purse.
On the other hand, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) provided a great deal of the data I used in my day-to-day role.
This data was preprocessed by the ABS into tables or excel documents. These were often chunks of information that were not much use to my audience.
My team spent many hours manually deconstruct and reconstruct the ABS data into different forms to make it useful for our corporate needs.
The ABS did not provide data as a raw feed. While the ABS did gave away its data for free online - and this was fantastically useful - the overhead that went into its website inevitably made it less timely, therefore reducing its value in a commercial sense.
So, in comparison:
BOM
- Gave its data away for free online (public access to public data)
- No data analysis required (lower cost to the agency, faster to market)
- Referrals from everyone reusing the data (reach)
- Enormous innovation in how the data was 'mashed' with other sources / analysed and presented (lower cost to agency, transference of risk of misinterpretation to private sector)
ABS
- Gave its reports away for free online - but not the raw data (public value but less timely)
- Provided intensive data processing (quality assurance but higher cost to the agency, slower to market)
- Limited online reuse, therefore fewer referrals (lower reach)
- No innovation in data analysis and presentation (higher analysis/presentation cost to agency, any risk of misinterpretation stays with the agency)
Bt the way, it's worth pointing out that BOM is the most trafficked government website in Australia. ABS, despite a wider range of statistics, is much further down the list.
Can the data approach be used across other agencies?
I believe it can. Even in my agency we release numbers and resources which could be indexed and provided in a raw data form for reuse.
We also have a website estimator for calculation purposes. There are around a dozen similar estimators that do a similar job - several providing virtually the same result as the official estimator. However those 'fan' estimators cost nothing to the public purse to create or maintain.
So if members of the public are prepared to create these tools, why should the agency?
Granted this last example is a little more tricky than that - the estimation process is time-consuming and maximising accuracy is a key goal.
However there are other government websites and tools which could and would be delivered by private organisations and individuals, if only the government allowed access to the data stream.
Level the playing field
Note that the article does not suggest that government should stop analysing data and presenting this analysis in websites.
What it suggests is to provide the raw data on a level playing field, thereby allowing private and public organisations the same capacity to use it.
The best way to ensure that the government allows private parties to compete on equal terms in the provision of government data is to require that federal websites themselves use the same open systems for accessing the underlying data as they make available to the public at large.This means that government agencies such as the ABS can continue to provide reports for people who choose not to do their own analysis.
However it opens the field to innovation and the use of various data sources to make connections that government, in a siloed form, is not as able to do.
This levelling is critical - if the government wants to see innovation it should not hold back the 'secret sauce'. The data needs to be available in a way that allows private and other public enterprises to use it in an equal way.
Open systems are available today via standards such as XML and RSS - look at how Google syndicates maps and ads or how Facebook allows the creation and dissemination of applications.
In conclusion
Government has a crucial role to play in the collection of data across the country. This is a task well suited to the public sector as it is in the public interest that this be available.
However government doesn't have the systems or culture to be best suited to interpret and combine this data or make it useful for individuals and organisations.
Government should provide interpretations - however it should not hold an artificial monopoly over this.
By allow other organisations to access the raw information innovation in its presentation can occur more rapidly, providing deeper insights for the public good.
Make government data freely available.
Does anyone have other examples of where government collected data has become freely available? I'd love to blog about the successes.
Friday, June 27, 2008
The online impact of the US election - implications for Australian government |
I've previously blogged about the impact of the online channel on Barack Obama's campaign and how it contributed significantly to his nomination as the Democrat presidential candidate.
There have also been broader implications for the US government scene, as captured in a Pew report released last week.
Pew has been one of my favourite commentators over the last six years due to the down-to-earth nature of their reports on online usage. I take their analysis as a prediction of where Australia will be in the next two to four years.
Their latest report, The Internet and the 2008 Election, surveyed normal Americans on their engagement with the 2008 US presidential election via the online channel.
What it found was that 46% of Americans have used the internet, email or SMS to get political news and share their thoughts about the campaign and 23% say they receive emails urging them to support a candidate or discuss the campaign once a week or more.
Now those might not sound like high percentages, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind.
Three elections ago (in 1996 - when Bill Clinton became US President), those figures would have been virtually zero. That's the speed at which the landscape is changing.
Secondly, keep in mind that only 60.7% of Americans eligible to vote actually did vote in the 2004 presidential election - and this was the highest percentage since 1968.
While given that Americans who do not vote may still follow the elections and receive emails about it, the following figures do take on much greater significance in light of the number of 'active voters' in the US.
Pew found that 19% of Americans go online once a week or more to do something related to the campaign (one-third of 'active voters'), and 6% go online to engage politically on a daily basis (ten percent of 'active voters').
It also found that 10% of Americans (fifteen percent of 'active voters') use email to contribute to the political debate and that 1 in 10 of those using SMS (4% of the adult population) are sending or receiving text messages about the campaign or other political issues on a regular basis.
Obama supporters were much more likely to use online communications. They outweighed Clinton supporters by 74% vs 57% and McCain supporters by 65% vs 56% (comparing online supporters that have gotten political news and information online).
Statistics aside, what does this mean for government?
The first implication is that online is now an important channel for electioneering. The last big shift in media use by politicians was more than forty years ago when Kennedy trumped Nixon in the first television debate - signalling a shift in politics from voice to image.
The online shift means that different values become important. Image will remain important in politics (in today's consumer-driven society how could it not), but consistency, substance and depth are also becoming critical.
When citizens can read or listen to a candidate's speech and instantly check their voting record and comments over the past ten years (such as via OpenAustralia) it becomes very clear to the voters when politicians are modifying their positions and dishonesty becomes a critical issue.
This isn't really new - one of the first well known instances was in 1998 when the Lewinsky scandal regarding President Bill Clinton was broken by the Drudge Report.
A second maor implication is on public sector management and governance. It's not only the histories and stories about politicians that become available online, it's also the performance records of government agencies and top public servants.
Where there are close ties between politicians and ministerial offices, politicians can be judged by how their departments engage and conduct themselves online. Individual senior public servants may also find their public comments or lack thereof also coming under intense scrutiny in a political sense.
Does this mean that government agencies and public servants need to hide under their shells and say as little as possible online?
I don't think so.
Firstly, this approach would not work. Citizens are very capable of creating their own websites, transcribing or recording comments and press releases and republishing or referring to them to demonstrate real or contrived inconsistencies in positions or behaviours.
Secondly it's not a bad thing to be held for public scrutiny. Without this scrutiny there's no point to having a democratic process. Politicians and public servants should be held accountable for their views and positions and, to some extent, their past choices.
Finally, online discussion is a benefit to getting accurate information into the public eye.
Once a conversation begins it becomes possible to contribute to it, clarify the issues and ensure that an accurate view is visible. This does require substantial agility - online conversations occur in real time and government doesn't have the time to consider, reflect and rework a statement over weeks before making comments. There is the need for rapid responsiveness, often within hours rather than days.
Follow-up on real-time government - video stream available online |
A quick addition to my post on real-time government, here's more background on how online technologies are being used to enable real-time government.
Watch Congressman's Culberson video stream for an explanation of an approach he's using to reach his constituents as a 'real-time representative'.
Why should government care - how many people use Firefox/Safari/Opera anyway? |
I've noticed a tendency in Australia for government agencies to focus on having their websites work perfectly in Microsoft Internet Explorer, but not always quite so well in Firefox, Safari, Opera or other web browsers.
This isn't limited to the public sector, private sector organisations face the same issue of cross-browser compatibility.
On one hand there is the Australian Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and a suite of other standards which relate to web accessibility, as well as state accessibility laws, that organisations - particularly government departments - are required to comply with.
On the other hand there are resource and testing limitations which constraint what organisations can do.
It is clearly important for organisations to support as many web browsers as possible, as the fewer the browsers supported, the longer the tail of people who will not get a satisfactory experience on a website.
There's also the possibility of legal risk. There's already been a high profile court case in Australia on accessibility, regarding the Sydney Olympics (for a great analysis of it by Joe Clark see Reader’s guide to Sydney Olympics accessibility complaint)
Applying web standards is te obvious approach, but not always the simple solution. The standards are quite complex and open to interpretation. Even when your web professionals believe you've met the W3C standards there can be variations in how your site will display in different 'standards-based' browsers.
Specifying which browsers you support is another approach. Simply choose the most used browsers and support those, with custom style sheets to address any page rendering differences. This will catch a good 95% of the market in the top four or so web browsers, but leave a tail of users with older web browsers or less well known products who may not receive the same experience.
So what is the best solution to ensure your organisation meets accessibility standards, delivers the intended experience and doesn't bankrupt itself in the process?
Unfortunately I don't have the knife to cut through for this Gordian knot, every organisation needs to weigh the considerations and decide its own best path.
I can provide a few further references to feed this decision.
Links to various accessibility legislation and guidelines are listed above. Most states in Australia also have government web standards they apply which can provide some guidance on the topic.
As for browser market share, below is a chart detailing the latest share figures from a major statistics collector.
Alongside outright browser shares, it is critical to consider web browser versions as well. While Internet Explorer has a 74% share (down from over 95% before Firefox was introduced), of this roughly 47% use IE7 and 27% use IE6 or earlier. Similar splits also occur for Firefox and other browsers.
Another good source for browser usage is your own web logs, which can provide a more audience specific view of who accesses your website. My agency uses Webtrends to analyse this data, but the majority of web log analysis tools will provide similar information.
Web browser shares - Q2 2008
Source: Wikipedia - Usage share of web browsers
Real-time government - not as far away as you think |
I was able to take part in an inpromptu live online video and text discussion this morning between Congressman John Culberson of Texas and initially with the Managing Editor of the Wall Street Journal, and then with Grover Norquist, the President of Americans against Tax Reform (pictured below) at a fund raising event in the US.
While I'm not their constituency (although I am a Director of an oil company with production interests in Petrolia), there were a number of others watching who were, and it was a fascinating look at the democratic process in evolution.
The online discussion was an opportunity for Congressman Culberson to directly reach and represent his constituency, asking and answering questions put to him.
The entire discussion was managed through the use of free online social media technologies, Twitter was used to inform the Congressman's constituents that the discussion was taking place and then Quix was used to capture the video on a mobile phone and stream it live to the internet , presenting it on a page where people could text chat directly with the participants, receiving verbal replies.
As one of the first in I was privileged to be mentioned by name - making it the first time I think I've been mentioned by an elected US Congressman.
That type of closeness - between individuals and their elected officials - is now becoming available, and we'll see how soon these technologies are in use in Australia's community Cabinet meetings and similar events.
Below is a screenshot I took of the event (see me at right logged in as CraigThomler).
The Congressman will also be conducting several further interviews through the evening using the same tools and the permanent record will be up at Quix.
Review: Funnel Back''s new search feature - Flusters |
To provide a little background, Funnel Back is a search technology developed and commercialised by CSIRO.
It has been deployed in Australia.gov.au as their Whole-of-Government search technology as my agency's website search tool (as a hosted solution) and in many other agencies and companies across Australia and other countries.
It's a reasonably good search engine if some time is spent configuring it and I've been happy with the search success levels we achieve (though always trying to improve them).
AGIMO recently invited my agency to participate in the live pilot test of Funnel Back's new search feature - Fluster (50kb PDF).
In brief Fluster helps users find what they are looking for by offering alternative phrases to refine their search terms.
An example of this in action is visible in Australia.gov.au - simply use the search and look at the Related Search area at the right of the page.
We've been trialing this feature within our site for a little over a month now and I have an initial view on how Fluster has been performing.
How Fluster is doing
Initially I was concerned about the relevancy of the topics and phrases that Fluster would choose to display. This hasn't proven to be an issue, Fluster is providing highly relevant results.
However I'm not convinced that people are using the tool effectively. We've seen no measureable change in the search success rate and I do not have evidence that visitors to our site are using the Fluster Related Search area when searching.
This could be an education issue. We currently present Fluster in the search results page without any form of help, meaning that our visitors are not guided to the tool.
It could also reflect that improvements are necessary in the reporting of Fluster use so we can determine if the tool is assisting people find what they need. These reports are still being refined by Funnel Back.
Another factor I keep in mind is the trend towards more sophisticated internet users.
A large proportion of people are very familiar with Google and other 'generic' search engines and have learnt to use phrases rather than individual words to increase the relevance of results.
In fact, the average length of a search term in Google exceeded four words at the end of 2007 - at least according to WebProNews which reports that People Are Finding More Words To Search With.
This means that people are already refining their own search terms, potentially reducing the value in having a search engine do it for them.
In conclusion
So my preliminary conclusion is that Fluster can add value to search results.
However more time will be required to really understand the impact it is having and test ways to help people use it effectively.
While internet users are becoming more sophisticated, this doesn't negate the value of Fluster. There are always new people coming into the user pool and even experienced users may on occasion find that Fluster suggests a topic or phrase that they had not considered but leads them to a relevant result.
Top level internet domains for dollars |
If you have a spare US$50-100,000 you may be able to buy your own top-level internet domain from ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).
ICANN moderates top level domains around the world. These domains, such as .com, .net, .com.au and .gov.au, are the basic naming structure of the internet and control what organisations and nations can do online.
Previously there were very tight controls over the naming structure and an extensive review process before new top level domains were created - of which very few were.
However the new regulations effectively allow any organisation - private or public - to register top level domains, subject to a much simpler review process and a payment.
I do not expect to see much impact on government in Australia - the .gov.au domain is well established and strongly mandated. However it now becomes much easier for states or councils to consider different naming - such as .nswgovernment or .sutherlandshire
In the private sector it's hard to say - previous releases of top level names have not seen significant attrition from the .com (or .com.au in Australia) names, but the alternatives haven't been that much better.
However with any top level domain name now possible, there is the possibility for greater fragmentation.
Time will tell.
More information on this decision is available at ItNews, ICANN proposes greater top-level domain name flexibility.
There's also a good opinion piece over at VentureBeat, ICANN threatens to change the rules of the domain name game
Slides from Web Directions Government now available online |
I heard some good reports from people who attended Web Directions Government back in May.
For those of you, like me, who missed it, Web Directions South has made a number of the presentations and podcasts available online via their blog, Web Directions Government resources now online.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Participate in the Global Intranet Survey |
Last year my agency participated in the Global Intranet Survey for the first time.
The report from the survey has proven very useful in our intranet planning and given me a number of ideas that we've been able to apply in the ongoing management of our intranet.
The survey is on again this year, we're participating again and I'd recommend the same to other intranet managers.
Sign up for the Global Intranet Survey 2008
International view: government mostly failing online |
Earlier this year The Economist released a special report on egovernment, entitled The Electronic Bureaucrat.
The report's conclusion was that whilst there were a few good examples of egovernment initiatives, most could not be considered successful.
It's a fascinating read regarding international views and experiences in the area and flags changes that government needs to make to be effective online, including;
- personalising services for citizens, storing preferences to make returning easier,
- delivering 24/7 availability,
- making online services at least as easy to use as the equivalent offline processes,
- being as well designed and easy to use as online services provided by the private sector - as this is what customers expect, and
- engaging with other online services - making content findable in search engines and cross-publishing with online news and social media tools to leverage reach.
Key points in the report include that technology is only half, or less, of the picture. As much time is required to review and redevelop government strategy, structures and processes as to put in place enabling systems.
One big lesson is that e-government is not just about computers; it involves redesigning the way government works.The report also suggests that competition is important, and huge scale centralised projects are much less successfully than smaller ones.
Still, the experience of the past ten years suggests a common pattern of which all countries, rich and poor alike, should take note. Centralised schemes tend to work much less well than decentralised ones, and competition is vital.My key takeaway from the report was that while government around the world sees the importance and value in moving service delivery and citizen interactions online, few have made the structural, cultural and process changes required to fully embrace the channel.
This reflects my own experiences as to why government is slow at embracing social media.
What's your takeaway?
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Do you practice what you preach? Personal use of online services |
As the business manager of my agency's website and intranet I see it as part of my responsibility to understand what is happening in the medium and use the same tools being used by our website audience.
It's similar to the concept of walking 1,000 miles in another person's shoes.
For instance, this blog. One of my goals in writing it is to better understand bloggers - their motivations and
I'm also an avid user of LinkedIn (for professional networking) and Facebook (for social networking), not to mention Del.icio.us (collaborative bookmarking), Twitter (micro-blogging), Gmail and Hotmail (web-based mail), Google Apps (collaborative documents), Friendfeed (social streaming), Flickr and Photobucket (online photo storage), Slideshare (online presentation storage), Basecamp (project management), Digg (user-rated news) and a number of other services.
These systems are generally complimentary and often work together extremely well.
In fact on any given day I'd probably interact with roughly half of these services.
Each week I look at a new tool - such as The Awesome Highlighter or Timetoast - to help keep me current with what is possible in the online space - some of it is mindblowing.
How about you?
Considering using Microsoft SharePoint for government websites and intranets? Consider your options carefully |
I've seen a lot of hype about SharePoint, Microsoft's solution for, well, just about anything related to online.
The product has been promoted as a Information Management system, as a Web Content Management system (Web CMS), as a replacement for shared drives and file systems, as an enterprise search tool and even as a platform for enterprise applications.
Amazingly enough it can fulfil all of these roles. However like other jack-of-all trades, it's not necessarily the best product for any one of them as detailed in this post, Advice for (prospective) SharePoint customers.
I've particularly been seeing a lot of push for SharePoint in the public sector.
Where agencies have selected a Microsoft technology path there's many good reasons to consider SharePoint as well - less complex environments to maintain, easier to train and recruit staff, there's plenty of synergies that can be leveraged with other Microsoft products.
However when considering any product for a role as important as being the engine of your online channel it's valuable to understand your options and undertake appropriate due diligence before investing public funds.
For instance, the initial purchase price of a Web CMS solution is a very small part of the picture, there's the lifetime cost to consider as well.
Generally I'd expect to use the same platform over a 3-5 year window at least, with substantial ongoing development to meet changing organisational needs. The cost of this development can be substantial.
Another major consideration is the staff costs related to content authoring and publishing. This is the real cost to staff in terms of the time required to use a system in the workplace. While a Web CMS might be cheap to purchase, if it is difficult or time-intensive to use that will seriously compromise the success and the viability of your online channel.
Other factors to consider include content migration, the split of responsibilities between IT and business areas, the cost of extensions to the system and the overall network and hardware costs of the system.
So while SharePoint is one options - and I've seen excellent implementations of the technology in agencies (such as in DEWR) - there are over 140 Web Content Management Systems available for purchase in Australia.
Many of them work very well within a Microsoft environment.
Google to release a web measurement tool to track target audiences |
Google looks to be entering the market Hitwise and Neilsen are already competing in - audience tracking online, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, Google to Offer a Tool To Measure Web Hits.
This differs from web log reporting in that it tracks website visitors across different websites to provide a behavioural picture of audiences by demographics.
I've used the Mosaic audience profiling tool within Hitwise to gain a good idea of whether my agency's site was effectively targeting the correct audience (it is) and to look at other websites with which we shared our audience.
This benchmarking has allowed us to identify appropriate press and magazine channels to target for communications activities, to identify websites that we may consider partnering with and to get a clearer picture of what our customers want and do to improve our publications and services.
It will be interesting to see how effective Google's service will be in the same area. With over 130 million unique visitors per day the organisation already has a wealth of data on what people do online and where they go.
OpenGovernment now in Australia - something all public servants should be aware of |
Regardless of how egovernment progresses, Australian citizens are moving forward to create the tools they want online.
The latest example is is a site named Open Australia.
Built based on the UK site They Work For You and the New Zealand site of the same name - TheyWorkForYou.co.nz, Open Australia feaures a fully searchable record of Hansard, provides MP voting records and details of their appearances in parliament and allows people to receive a notification whenever their MP speaks.
Crikey.com.au has rated this as "Quite possibly the best thing to happen online for democracy in Australia this year"
At the moment the site is focused on the House of Representatives, which means I cannot get a notification on all speeches by my Department's Minister, who is a Senator.
However I can track all mentions of him in speeches with a simple search (to the extent of being able to see which other parliamentarians named him) and have these delivered to my newsreader via RSS.
This type of site significantly lowers the barriers to accessing information on the activities and decisions of parliamentarians, which also impacts on the public servants in their departments, particularly those formulating policy.
The volunteers who built and manage the site are working towards including the Senate, Committees and voting records as well.
This type of site is designed to foster greater participation and accountability amongst politicians and it will be interesting to see what impact it has over time.
Australian use of social media skyrocketing |
Universal McCann have completed some excellent research on social media use based on a sample of 17,000 users across 29 countries.
The latest wave was completed in March 2008.
The key findings were that blogs and online videos have gone mainstream and are tools that organisations need to consider within their marketing and communications mix.
Social networks had reached critical mass. Note that since this research was completed, Facebook has overtaken MySpace as the market leader.
I've embedded the slideshow below, or it is viewable at slide share as Universal Mccann International Social Media Research Wave 3
The highlights for Australia:
Blogs
62% of Australians online read blogs (up from 21% in Sep 2006)
29% of Australians online have started blogs (up from 18% in Sep 2006)
36% of people online (globally) think more positively of organisations that blog
32% of people online (globally) trust blogger's opinions on products and services
Social networks
50% of Australians online have created a profile on a social network (21% of the Australian population)
Shared videos online
77% of Australians online have watched online videos (up from 25% in Sep 2006)
28% of Australians online have shared videos (12% of the Australian population)
Listened to Podcasts
40% of Australians online have listened to a Podcast (up from 14% in Sep 2006)
Subscribed to RSS feed
24% of Australians online have subscribed to an RSS feed
The slideshow
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Usability testing - doing it like Google |
Techcrunch has provided A Peak Inside Google’s Gmail Usability Lab.
It's an interesting look at how one of the most web-savvy companies in the world conducts usability testing.
It is not much more sophisticated than Centrelink's usability lab in Adelaide or Immigration's lab in Canberra.
UK government principles for participation online - where's Australia's principles? |
I've just found the UK civil service's Principles for participation online and are mighty impressed.
As a result I've slightly modified my profile, I'll also be promoting this in my office where I know we have at least several other bloggers and quite a bit of online engagement coming up.
In Australia, while we have an excellent Australian Public Service code of conduct, we do not have anything specific for the online channel.
This does raise the question - do we need a set of principles, or does The Code cover it already?
eGovernment progress in New Zealand |
In Development has linked to A report on the progress of New Zealand e-government.
This is the first official report from the NZ government on egovernment since 2004.
From a quick look I'd say it is doing reasonably well. They've done a lot to understand what citizens need and address this in clear and simple paths through various government agencies.
There's some excellent success stories in the report and I'm looking forward to sitting down and reading it in depth, probably this weekend, after which I'll provide some highlights.
It is also very significant for me that the report was released via an official NZ government blog (being run as part of a six month trial) - there is a lot of commitment being demonstrated via this approach.
Monday, June 23, 2008
eGovernment via Twitter |
It looks like in the US state governments are now actively using Twitter as a tool to get messages out into the public eye.
As mentioned by Static{fade} in eGov status updates via Twitter, a number of states are using it to make official announcements, distribute media releases and engage with stakeholders and citizens.
Given that McCain and Obama will tweet it out in Twitter debate (or at least some of their staff did), it's clear that social media is becoming a more and more useful channel for egovernment in the US.
I'll have to begin considering its use for promoting our media releases (as a first step).
Anyone else in Australian government considering Twitter?
Making government recruitment effective online |
This post in Shifted HR reflects an area I have my eye on - Recruitment in the Australian Public Service
In Allison's words:
HR areas in APS agencies need to stop focusing on the process of recruitment and use technology to do this. They should be focusing their energy in supporting, educating and training line managers on recruitment strategy, attraction and candidate management.
Coming from the private sector I am used to organisations having effective online recruitment systems. These remove unnecessary manual steps in applying for jobs, managing applications, communicating with applicants and filtering job seekers by abilities.
I'd like to upgrade the systems at my agency when we can give it appropriate attention.
What has been your experience in rolling out systems to support the recruitment process at your organisation?
Managing the 'grey hair' drain |
A big issue in government, as in the private sector, is the drain of experienced older people as they decide to change lifestyles.
Dow has followed an interesting strategy of developing an alumni social network, which helps keep ex-employees - both retirees and others - linked into the organisation.
This keep their experience on tap and can also serve as a pool of potential recruits back to the organisation.
Given how important the aging of Australia's public service has become on the APS agenda, I'd be interested whether any agencies are considering strategies like this one to help them manage future trainsitions.
Dow's article: "My Dow Network" Provides Dow People with New Way to Connect
Thanks to Web Strategy by Jeremiah for this link in his post, Gen Y Enter Stage Left, Baby Boomers Exit Stage Right.
Note that with new intranet social media tools being developed by Microsoft and LinkedIn, Dow's approach may become very cost-effective in the future, linking into people's existing online social networks.
Do all your egovernment tools meet accessibility standards? |
In Australia website usability is important, but accessibility is law.
While most government agencies are extremely diligent about meeting accessibility requirements it is also important to look at the accessibility of any online tools they use that affect their customers or clients.
For example, my agency uses a third-party email marketing system, Vision6 for electronic newsletters to customers and a US-based survey tool, SurveyMonkey for customer and stakeholder surveys.
Vision6 is an Australian company and has met all applicable accessibility requirements for a long time. We also make a point of offering plain text versions of all HTML emails we distribute through this tool to further ensure we're providing an email version that customers can readily access.
SurveyMonkey, being a US system, isn't required by law to meet Australian accessibility standards - although it meets the applicable W3C guidelines on which this was based.
Previously we used this service as no other web survey platform I had identified met the agency's requirements and was fully Australian standards compliant.
However they have just been certified as compliant with the US's Section 508 Accessibility requirements, which, according to SurveyMonkey, makes them the only online survey application that is Section 508 certified, as explained in their website, Your survey designs are now 508 compliant!
This isn't an Australian standard, however it is a very long way towards meeting it.
If you're unsure what the Australian requirements are, AGIMO's Accessibility section provides a concise and clear explanation.
If you're not sure how to test for accessibility, WebAIM has a good list of accessibility testing tools and when/how to use them.
Incidentally, the W3C is getting much closer to the second version of their accessibility guidelines (WCAG 2.0) - after 5 years of work.
Webcredibility have a review of the new version in their site at WCAG 2.0: The new W3C accessibility guidelines evaluated.
A different way to look at agency customers |
My agency spends a lot of money learning about our customers with the goal of identifying how to provide them with better services.
These research processes quite often lead to huge presentations full of statistics that attempt to explain customer intentions and motivations.
If you have a maths bent, these presentations speak very loudly - however they don't always translate well for others and can be difficult to absorb and interpret.
An approach that I find is very eloquent is to imagine that you have only 100 customers living in a village and look at their conditions, hopes and aspirations in this framework.
This has been used with great effect by Miniature Earth - which takes this concept and applies it to the entire globe.
There's also an application of it to companies, looking at large corporations or agencies from the same perspective of a 100 person village.
Brought to my attention by Steve Collin's Thoughtglue blog, you can view it at: McDaniel Partners: Are You Effectively Managing Your Most Important Asset?.
So using this concept for your customers, what do they look like, and where are they going?
The issues with CAPTCHA security |
CAPTCHA is a security technology for websites that works by making users verify they are a human by typing in a random string of letters or numbers displayed in an image.
CAPTCHA isn't accessible - straight CAPTCHA may breach accessibility law
CAPTCHA relies on presenting a graphic image of text to a viewer, who then reads the text and enters it into a text box. As computers are now smart enough to read clear images, the images used in modern CAPTCHA systems are usually 'messy' with random strokes and distorted letters (called reCAPTCHA).
For example:
These images can also be hard for some humans to read - the old, the young, the visually-impaired and even groups who would not consider themselves as having sight issues.
This means that visual CAPTCHA systems may be inaccessible under Australian laws regarding accessibility. This is a very important consideration for Australian government agencies.
There are approaches to get around this, such as either offering a selection of images, one of which (hopefully) is readable by the audience; or through offering an audio alternative, whereby someone listens to a series of letters or numbers - usually interspersed with other sounds - and types these in.
Note that the latter approach also has similar accessibility issues for those with hearing impairments.
Personally I have on occasion had difficulty using either a visual and audio CAPTCHA approach and my vision and hearing are both above average for my age group (Gen X).
There are several ways to break a CAPTCHA system.
The first is to simply have a large group of low paid computer users systematically interpret and type in the correct response.
Organisations in nations where labour is cheap are able to offer this as a service for hacking sites or preparing the way for automated systems to then use hacked sites and accounts for spamming and other illicit purposes.
Also as technology improves it becomes easier for machines to break CAPTCHA. Already we've seen a move from clear text to messy and distorted images - tested against optical character recognition to ensure they are not readable - in order to reduce the ability for computers to read the image.
Not endorsed by the W3C
CAPTCHA is not endorsed for use by the W3C.
The W3C has indicated in a working paper entitled Inaccessibility of CAPTCHA that CAPTCHA is inaccessible and the technology is not yet endorsed within W3C guidelines.
This means that it is not endorsed within the standard guidelines underpining website development in the public sector.
This doesn't exclude agencies from using it - it has not been specifically rejected by the W3C, it sits in a gray area and each agency would have to make their own decision.
So what next?
CAPTCHA has already advanced to reCAPTCHA - involving the messy distorted text indicated above.
Most reCAPTCHA implementations have also integrated audio reCAPTCHA as an alternative - in the hope that if people cannot read the image they can understand the sounds.
Some organisations, such as banks, use physical PIN devices, others have talked about using fingerprint or retina scanners attached to PCs.
However there is no clear successor to reCAPTCHA for widespread use on websites.
What should organisations do?
As there's no readily accessible and cost-effective alternative, organisations should strongly consider reCAPTCHA as a security measure in their sites, integrating both visual and audio approaches.
However they should also strongly consider offering an approach accessible to those who cannot see or hear the CAPTCHA security, such as phone-based identification or the use of secret questions.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Why are government organisations slow at embracing social media? |
This post was triggered by a question post over at Strange Attractor, asking Why isn't social software spreading like wildfire through business?
This is a question I have considered as well, in the last year from a government perspective.
It particularly puzzled me late last year when I made unsuccessful efforts to get a wiki in place for a very clear need within the organisation.
At the time it was clear that people in my agency wanted to collaborate more effectively, that they were committed to their jobs and highly able.
They were already making good use of the collaboration tools they had - meetings, documents, email and intranet.
At the time I believed the limiting factor was time. Everyone was overworked and stressed - people simply did not have the capacity to take on more meetings, read more documents or send more emails.
I also thought the solution was clear. To facilitate more collaboration what people needed was the tools to leverage their time for collaboration more effectively. I aimed to help them achieve this leverage using online social media tools.
ROI could be justified by travel savings, employee satisfaction and better quality outcomes.
However when attempting to introduce the wiki, I hit a brick wall and we went back to older approaches which, in my calculations, have cost the agency significantly more money and time and delivered an inferior outcome.
At the time I was quite disappointed and looked for an explanation of the cause within the agency's structure.
However after months of thought on this topic, I've arrived at the following conclusion as to why smart and able people resist the introduction of tools that would help them in their jobs.
It's command and control culture
The majority of organisations, both public and private, are structured as effective dictatorships. There is a CEO at the top, they allocate power out to trusted lieutenants, who transfer smaller amounts of power to underlings.
Each lieutenant has a particular area of power - be it Marketing, Sales, ICT, Operations, Finance or HR. They work together on the fringes where power must be shared to achieve the organisation's goals.
Now clearly this is an effective structure. It worked for hundreds, if not thousands, of years in medieval societies. Kings and Queens at top, ministers and advisers beneath them and fiefdoms owing allegiance to different groups.
However, by its nature this approach is divisive rather than integrative.
Each lieutenant competes over resources, recognition and money for their groups. There is only a small incentive to co-operate, and alliances do not always last very long.
Within each group underlings compete in a similar fashion, for power, prestige and position.
Again this isn't the most fertile soil for collaboration - except where there is direction from above or very clear and unequivocal win-win situations.
Now from my writing you may draw the conclusion that I am against this structural approach.
Actually I'm not. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with a command and control approach. What is important is to consider the goals of the organisation and whether the means achieve those goals with the available resources.
As the goals and environment change over time, the approach needs to be reassessed to ensure it continues to deliver on the outcomes cost-effectively.
The impact of technology
Today organisations attempt to achieve a great deal more with fewer resources. Technology has already facilitated this.
Phones replaced telegraphs that replaced runners, computers replaced typing pools that replaced scribes.
These changes didn't happen overnight, but once a certain proportion of organisations made the change others had no choice but to also change or die.
This has happened with the internet as well. Entirely new companies have formed and become very successful in the last ten years. The 'dinosaurs' didn't die out overnight but are being forced to adopt some of the traits of newer organisations to survive.
This evolutionary process occurs faster in the private sphere due to competition over profits. Government, being funded by the public purse is not subject to the same degree of competition and has less incentive to risk change.
The network effect
Online social networks are one of the next steps in this evolution.
In some ways these networks are even more of a challenge for organisations than the introduction of personal computers, which could be integrated into a existing organisational approaches.
Command and control structures by their nature seek to control and restrict information flows in order to better direct and focus their resources (staff). They silo areas by specific functions - putting all the programmers here, communications people there and finance people somewhere else.
This approach makes command and control management easier, as teams are homogeneous.
It also leads to the formation of different cultures and approaches in different areas of the organisation. These can reduce organisational efficiency by forming isolated silos, each with their own language and customs - a Tower of Babel situation.
Traditionally command and control organisations have dealt with this issue by employing translators to allow information to pass between areas in carefully managed ways. These include people in roles such as internal account managers, business analysts and project managers.
However with social networks the goal is complete transparency. Almost all the barriers between silos come down to allow free communication and collaboration. The focus becomes the outcome, rather than the process.
Change is hard
Even in cases where organisations want to support the free flow of ideas and collaboration, achieving this is hard as the command and control culture simply isn't aligned to support it.
Pockets of collaboration can and do spring up, but widespread adoption requires widespread change.
This change requires visible and strong leadership from those who gain the most from command and control structures and have the most to lose in a network organisation - the executives at the top of the pile.
If these people do not enthusiastically adopt, facilitate and support the change it will not occur.
This is very hard for senior management as they have the largest stake in the existing structure.
They need to willingly let go of their silo power in order to harness an even greater power - that of the organisation acting in unison.
The challenge is to give up control in order to retain it
So that's my view of why organisations are slow to adopt social media.
It's not skills, experience, power or even need. It's a side effect of the dominant command and control culture.
I'd appreciate your comments and views.
Bottom bar - change in motion
By the way for a practical example of how difficult this change can be and how long it takes, look at China and the political change it has been undergoing for the last twenty years.
The nation is struggling with how to give up centralised political power without losing control - a struggle reflected in miniature in many organisations around the world.
Intranet day - global event |
It has felt a little like 'Intranet Day' in the last few days as I've posted a number 0f times about intranet developments.
It really was Intranet Day on 18-19 June - a global online event where intranet managers were able to discuss their intranet strategies and a number of large organisations such as the BBC, IBM and Microsoft demonstrated their intranet functionality.
The podcasts and slides from various presentations on the day will be available shortly at the IBF website.
I confess that I missed the event - hadn't even heard that it was taking place until it was over - so am eagerly awaiting these presentations. I'll post again once they are up.
If you also missed the event it is worth looking out for some of the Intranet Tours in Australia.
Or simply organise your own as I've done in the past.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
The power of participatory culture - in government |
Stephen Collins of Acidlabs has delivered an extremely powerful presentation on the power of participatory culture and the evolution of social media as an extension of the natural tendency for humans to form communities.
These communities empower organisations, fostering a positive culture, improving staff retention, supporting collaboration and breaking down silos - making individual employees, teams and the entire organisation more powerful, effective and successful.
The approach holds as well, if not more so, for government organisations as for the private sector.
I cannot recommend this presentation highly enough!
Slouching towards intertwingularity: The power of participatory cultures
Visual bird's eye view of the internet's role in Barack Obama's US Presidential campaign |
OK I admit it - Barack Obama's campaign, first for the Democrat nomination, and now for the US Presidency, fascinates me - hence my eObama post.
It's the first true online campaign for senior office in the world that has used the internet and social media effectively.
This visual representation of how the campaign ran, and the comparison of its success against others is fantastic for explaining how his systems work.
Developed by Xplane
Microsoft testing prototype of intranet social network |
Microsoft is joining the race to add social networks to intranets.
Computerworld has reported that Microsoft is prototyping a Face-book style tool for providing employees with feeds and updates about their colleagues.
I'd expect this to be an extension of their SharePoint product, allowing them to leverage their customer base to defend again online-only alternatives, such as Linkedin, who recently announced their own initiative in this area.
read more - Microsoft testing prototype of Facebook-like social network | digg story
Google trends launched for websites |
Google Trends is a great tool for tracking the ebb and flow of ideas, products and personalities in the public eye.
I've used it, for example, to track customer awareness of an agency name change - which gave my agency a good handle on the speed at which our communications was shifting perceptions.
This is important for comms people in government bodies changing names due last year's Federal election (such as FAHCSIA vs FACSIA)
Google has now launched Google Website Trends.
In the words of Google, A new layer to Google Trends
Today, we add a new layer to Trends with Google Trends for Websites, a fun tool that gives you a view of how popular your favorite websites are, including your own! It also compares and ranks site visitation across geographies, and related websites and searches.
What does that mean for you?
In other words, communicators can now track the level of community awareness of their brand over time aggregated by all the search terms used in Google to reach their website. The reports also provide insights into the search terms used, and the other sites visited by these people.
For example a trend on Centrelink demonstrates how popular searches on the baby bonus have been in driving traffic to the site.
This can also look at the impact of campaigns on driving traffic (via Google) to a new site over time - such as this trend on the Do Not Call website (looks like ACMA needs to rebuild awareness of this site).
Here's a comparison of searches for the ATO and Centrelink sites as an example of the tool in action.
How do you use Google Trends?
Breaking rules: Build your intranet outside your firewall |
It's an established fact that intranets (or internal networks) grow and live within your organisation's firewall.
Or is it?
New approaches and technology are now challenging the concept that intranets must be stored within your organisation's direct structure.
For instance in Australian government there is Govdex. This wiki-based extranet system meets secret level Federal government provisions and is free for government users.
It doesn't stretch this system too far to consider it as suitable as an intranet platform for any small government agencies with no intranet budget.
As it is wiki-based it provides basic content management functionality, including a news tool and discussion board - which is more intranet functionality than most smaller agencies can claim now.
For example I've recently worked with another area to implement a secure Govdex wiki space as a micro intranet for a key community within my agency. This will expand into an extranet over time, but it functions now just like any other intranet platform.
Govdex isn't the only option on the horizon.
LinkedIn, a business networking site, is planning to release a series of work-related tools to support collaboration between staff members. These would sit in secure areas of LinkedIn, but on the intranet.
This was discussed in a recent New York Times article, At Social Site, Only the Businesslike Need Apply
One new product, Company Groups, automatically gathers all the employees from a company who use LinkedIn into a single, private Web forum. Employees can pose questions to each other, and share and discuss news articles about their industry.
Soon, LinkedIn plans to add additional features, like a group calendar, and let independent developers contribute their own programs that will allow employees to collaborate on projects.
The idea is to let firms exploit their employees’ social connections, institutional memories and special skills — knowledge that large, geographically dispersed companies often have a difficult time obtaining.
Behind LinkedIn, other start-ups are also entering this space, providing for significant innovation to best address organsational space needs.
This is very interesting news for anyone with a small budget and need for a significant intranet.
Rather than investing in building or buying a content management system, developing social tools or managing intranet hardware and software, simply use openly available software to facilitate it.
So what would it take to make you consider building your intranet outside the firewall?
Friday, June 20, 2008
Networking Australian government websites |
As the business manager of a government website I'm always interested in how much traffic arrives from other government sites.
I can directly engage other agencies, building relationships, sharing content and processes, to the benefit of our mutual customers.
I see a real opportunity for departments and agencies to work together to help ensure that citizens are directed to the right website and can progress seamlessly across departments to complete different tasks with government.
This isn't only at Federal level. Similar transparently should exist at all levels, allowing, for instance, someone registering a company, to then seamlessly obtain all the permits they require to do business in their state.
However what I find from the website I manage is that only a very small proportion of traffic comes from other departments and agencies.
This can be read in a few different ways
- Citizens do not do all their government business in one sitting, therefore do not need to move between departments, or
- Government departments are highly siloed and do not support easy transitions between agencies - or even tell citizens when they need to do this.
Hitwise, using the data they collect on 3 million Australian website users, has produced a visual chart of the connections between the most trafficked Federal agencies. This is a very interesting glimpse of where the government is today.
Chart reproduced with the permission of Hitwise. View the full version.
With the current push towards the Australian Government Online Services Point (AGOSP) it will be interesting to see how this develops over time - whether Australia.gov.au can emerge as a central portal for government; and whether this is what citizens actually want.
What connections does your website have to other sites - and how do you use these to increase awareness of use of your site?
What's relevant to Intranet Managers |
What are the top priorities for your intranet?
There's a few interesting surprises in this quick poll by the organiser of the 2008 Global Intranet Strategies Survey, 3 surprises on the "relevancy list" for Intranet managers
If you don't currently participate in this survey I strongly recommend that you consider it for this year.
Government intranets challenges and how to meet them |
Intranets can be an important business 'glue' for both private and public organisations.
They enable geographically diverse individuals to share knowledge and productively collaborate, areas within the organisation to disseminate information, help senior leadership reinforce corporate values, strengthen internal communication and help align management and staff with corporate goals.
Not surprisingly many of the challenges faced by government agencies in making their intranets effective and successful reflect the challenges faced in the corporate world.
There's a lot government can learn from business experiences if it chooses.
Jeremiah Owyang has developed a useful list of challenges for intranets which resonate with my own experiences. Followin is a summary of his list from his blog posts about Intranets in brown and some of the strategies I employ to address them.
- Leadership not employee focused. Web strategy is often owned by the Marketing department, or a dedicated web team, they have specific business goals to hit, and they are often aimed at marketing or customer focused –not employee focused.
While my Online Comms Team lives within our Comms department, we very clearly define ourselves as custodians, rather than owners of our agency's intranet.
When I took over the intranet function the existing team already saw one of their primary goals as to unlock the medium to enable staff. I've supported and reinforced this goal and advocated it to senior management by demonstrating the value the intranet can provide the organisation.
We constantly test new things to improve the intranet for staff and actively foster innovation amongst our intranet authors, who are closer to the audience of our intranet than my group can be. - Little love from IT: IT often owns the infrastructure, systems, and applications that the Intranet sits on top of, and they often are focused on ERP project and leave the intranet in a ‘maintenance and manage’ mode.
Fortunately my agency does not suffer from this IT culture to an enormous extent, although in the past I have witnessed varying levels of commitment to the intranet. My biggest challenge in this area is to keep our IT team engaged and focused on the outcomes generated by the intranet, rather than focusing on the technical and bureaucratic processes that enable these outcomes.
Achieving this is all about mutual communication, understanding and engagement while supporting the expertise of our IT team. It's an area I've not yet perfected (and neither has our IT group), but we've built significant forward momentum. - Value not recognized: The intranet management team (if you have one) is perceived as a corporate cost as it can’t directly generate revenue further perplexing the problem.
This challenge was one I faced, not regarding the intranet as a profit-generating product, but as an accurate, useful and highly frequented medium the agency could use to achieve it's staff communications and collaboration goals.
I've invested heavily in appropriate intranet statistical and user satisfaction reporting, ensured that our content is relevant and up to date and worked on our approach to train and support intranet authors. The authors are particularly important as advocates of the intranet within business areas, as champions of the channel who are able to create the value our intranet provides for staff.
Out of this followed an ongoing communications campaign to management and staff, ensuring that the organisation understood the frequency and purpose of intranet use and the number of vital resources for staff it contained.
This has reinforced the intranet-aware culture in the agency and builds on the intranet's importance as a communications and engagement tool. - Too many cooks in kitchen: Many constituents from Marketing, HR, IT, and every business unit make decisions at an enterprise level difficult, unwieldy, and often not worth the effort.
This is still an issue for our agency and I do not expect it to go away. What I am currently building towards with my team is an approach that segments intranet content owners by their need for support and guidance in the effective use and management of the medium. Some owners require only light contact from time to time, others require ongoing support to build their knowledge and skills and thereby their effectiveness.
Through this process my team works to embed intranet standards and thereby create alignment across different groups. While this doesn't reduce the level of consultation necessary, it does align the decision-makers, ensuring they all have sufficient information and insight to make key decisions. - Decision makers oblivious: Management and decision makers don’t use the intranet, they rely on administrative staff for scheduling, sometimes emails, and any intranet tasks, the pains and opportunities are rarely seen.
We're able to track intranet usage by individual, which provides a keen insight into which levels of staff most use our intranet. As with most organisations I've worked with, it is the front-line staff and middle management who rely on the intranet for the information to do their jobs. Senior managers have other resources to enable them to do this, and also tend to operate in smaller circles of peers, which reduces their need to rely on our intanet.
To address this my team spends a geat deal of time ensuring there is awareness of the intranet and the value it delivers to staff. We are fortunate in that a number of key job tools for the majority of our staff are primarily accessed from our intranet, which helps embed its importance for the organisation.
Other challenges my agency faces includes:
- Consistency of intranet content, language, tone, depth and clarity. Where consistency is low so is trust in the intranet's accuracy and relevance. There's a great deal of work I still have to do to establish more effective training programs for intranet authors - in particular ensuring that this training is valuable for them in their careers to generate commitment in our staff to build these skills.
- Transforming the mindset from comms to collaboration. Our intranet is still very much an outbound communications tool used to spread messages, like ripples, from an inner core to our staff on the outer rim. Due to a number of factors this works well for my agency at the moment, however it does not help engender a full sense of engagement in the organisation for all staff or facilitate horizontal knowledge transfer between people at the same level in different geographic areas.
To meet this challenge, we are gradually moving towards more of a collaborative model, within the limits of our infrastructure and management's safety zones. The eventual goal is to have our intranet become a living resource where staff can work together, support and mentor each other within a lightly moderated environment. This network-centric model, with some balancing from experts to ensure accuracy, provides more timely and direct collaboration than a more traditional 'command and control' environment.
What additional challenges does your agency's intranet face - and how have you addressed them?
Thursday, June 19, 2008
User experience design made simple |
Ruth Ellison gave a fantastic talk at BarCamp Canberra looking at user experience design from the perspective of chef Gordon Ramsay's TV show, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.
Her presentation gave me a new way to look at the topic and a simple way to explain what it is and how it works for people unfamiliar with the approach.
Ruth blogged about the talk, but I've only found it today, Gordon Ramsay - a guerrilla UX consultant?
The breakdown of the advertiser/consumer relationship and how to fix it - get inspired! |
This is a great series of short videos exploring how communicators have lost their audiences because consumers have changed, but advertisers have not.
Does it apply to government?
Probably even more so...
Here's the first movie 'The Break Up'
And the sequel 'Inspiration Anyone'
More to come!
Visit their website at GetInspiredHere
Impressive use of geospatial data |
There are some very clever people in the US, and a group of them have built some very interesting geospatial systems for displaying government data.
For example David Fletcher's blog has made me aware that the US Census has developed the OnTheMap service for analysing employment data. It offers a number of tools for creating map overlays to help filter and present data in value-add ways.
It's well worth a look and a think about what could be done in Australia with the latest census results.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Effective use of PDFs in websites and intranets |
My agency has historically provided documents within our website and intranet in three formats, HTML (web pages), RTF (Rich Text Format) and PDF. The rationale behind this has been to give customers choice.
It has also allowed us to look at relative usage over time to see which formats are most preferred by our customers and staff.
The ratio we see by visits roughly averages as follows:
100 HTML (webpages) : 12 PDF : 1 RTF
This does suggest there while, as you'd expect, most web users prefer to view web pages, there is a legitimate place in our website for PDF versions. (RTF we're considering dropping altogether.)
There are significant incremental costs involved in delivering documents in different formats.
This includes the issues in managing updating across the formats and, particularly for PDF, managing accessibility and effective searching.
This leads on to the core issue:
If we have a legitimate need to provide different formats of documents in our website and there is a cost to doing so, how do we maximise the effectiveness of the different formats in order to maximise our ROI?
Here's some steps that my agency has taken.
Firstly, looking at PDF-specific issues, many PDFs are not designed to be found easily in search engines. Where they are findable, the text provided in the PDF results is often gobble-de-gook.
This is easily fixed by setting a couple of properties in each PDF, well explained in the article Make your PDFs work well with Google (and other search engines) in the Acrobat user group.
Accessibility can also become an issue. While PDFs are actually quite good for accessibility purposes, many are never optimised for accessibility either due to lack of knowledge or lack of time. Given that government has a legal obligation to deliver accessible websites this could be quite a large issue for some agencies when audited.
Adobe's PDF creator comes with the ability to test the accessibility of a PDF and suggest improvements. I use this regularly on PDFs and find that it's both effective and provides useful suggestions. If you are unsure of what you can do to address PDF accessibility, simply running this report can provide you with a handle on what needs to be done.
The PDF creator also comes with a system for metatagging images within PDF documents with alternative text and structuring the order in which headings and text blocks are read to help people who cannot read the words, such as those who are vision impaired.
The most recent versions of Adobe Acrobat reader also include a screen reader for the vision-impaired, and simply using this tool to listen to your documents while closing your eyes can give you a clearer insight into how accessible your PDFs really are.
Finally, in my opinion, PDFs are not a great format for online use. If you're on the web you expect to find web pages. PDF is a useful print alternative, but isn't really the format of choice for reading online. In my experience PDFs are primarily used when someone wants to print a document for later reference.
HTML web pages are quite simple and fast to update. However PDF (and RTF) require significantly more attention and, often, specialist designers or tools.
This adds cost and time but not always significant value, particularly when changes are quite small and non-critical.
There are approaches that can reduce the cost and time required - and avoid those situations when your PDFs and web pages do not match.
My agency is in the process of implementing a CSS-based replacement for printable PDF fact sheets. Basically we've developed a fact sheet print template for web pages which can be used to generate more effective PDF-like pages.
Another approach we are looking at for the future is to use PDF on the fly generators, which allow the delivery of any web content as a PDF at a click of a button.
The advantage of this approach is that an agency can continue to provide PDF versions, but without the effort and cost of developing them. Only the website's HTML version needs to be maintained as the PDF version is basically generated on request from your website users.
So findability, accessibility and more accurate and timely delivery are all achievable with PDFs with just a little thought. These lift the effectiveness of this format, helping our customers find and access the information.
Of course, most people will still prefer web pages, but if your agency is committed to offering PDF as an option - or the sole way to access documents - with some improvements to their effectiveness you'll be helping ensure that your customers get what they need.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
How many options are too many? |
Donna Spencer has written a very thoughtful piece on how many items were ‘too many’ to have in a navigation bar on a website.
Entitled, How many items in a navigation bar it's well worth a read.
She argues that the 7+/- 'rule' is more of a myth and offers some suggestions on how to evaluate when a longer navigation bar is appropriate.
Adding my 2c, I think it's also important to consider the importance of each item to your audience to ensure the menu is appropriately arranged.
This doesn't always mean placing the most popular item at the top of a list, or far left of a navigation bar.
If this occurs it is possible that your audience will stop reading at this first item and not go on to look at other menu choices that would better fulfil their needs.
But what's a better option?
Alphabetical?
By order of steps within a process?
Drawn out of a hat?
Have you ever organised or read about an experiment testing which menu ordering approach maximises use by customers?
Was the Australian Federal Election in 2007 really the YouTube election? |
Maybe not - if this ITnews article Study says the 2007 ‘YouTube election’ is a misnomer is correct.
Of course, even using YouTube, Australia is a long way behind the eObama campaign in the US.
When good websites turn bad |
I've had a keen interest in the Attorney General's Department for a number of years now.
That's not because they may - or may not - be the government department most likely to have James Bond, Triple X or the Men In Black working for them.
It's because they do a lot of important things across a range of areas, but rarely seem to get much credit for it.
For example, while their name suggests a dry, boring legal portfolio - and indeed they do have a large role in the intersection between Australia's legal system and government - they are also responsible for developing emergency management systems and supporting emergency management services, which become pretty important to people when there is an earthquake, flood or other disaster.
They also look after the Family Relationship Centres, which play an enormous role in supporting families around the country and manage Comlaw, THE source for legislative information in Australia and Australian Law Online, equally the source for legal and justice related information.
That's not to mention counter-terrorism, or engagement with the justice systems across the Pacific.
These are all important and useful activities and would make the AG's Department a very interesting place to work.
But what have they done to their website?
The other day I visited the main AG's website for the first time in awhile and was surprised at what I found.
I have my views on attractive and usable web design and they don't match what the AG's Department has done to their site.
The URL icon in the web address bar is cute - a scale of justice, much clearer than using a Commonwealth crest which suffers at a 16x16 pixel size. Unfortunately this was also the high point for me.
The site is coloured a very bright orange, fading through to blue with black highlights. The crest is nicely positioned at a good size at top left, but doesn't blend well with the page - it sits on a solid dark background and has harsh lines separating it from the rest of the design.
The website homepage has more than 70 visible links, organised into topic area throughout the left half two-thirds of the website - basically exposing much of the site navigation, using up most of the visible area to do it rather than neat dropdown menus.
It does have a right-hand column with several news items, Ministerial links and a couple of publications.
However that left hand area with all those links! It doesn't make the site very attractive or usable, it's simply overwhelming!
I did go to the site for a specific purpose, but after one look at the homepage, I fled back to Google and searched for the content instead - finding it within seconds.
I think that many other users similarly overwhelmed with options would react in a similar way.
So what mistake has AG's made - the concept that if links are good, more links are better?
That a home page, being largely a navigation page, should simple be a list of links?
Certainly that was the peak of user design back in the mid-90s, when Yahoo launched with a groundbreaking list of lists, neatly categorised by type. But I do not see any of today's popular sites taking a similar approach - perhaps the world has moved on.
I'm sure the department had good intentions for this design and was aiming to making it easier for the many audiences that visit the AG's site, for many different reasons.
However I do not think the approach selected will maximise the utility of the site - and look out for that 'bounce' rate!
Bounce rate (From Google Analytics' definition)
Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page). Bounce Rate is a measure of visit quality and a high Bounce Rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren't relevant to your visitors.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Redesigning sites to put customers at the centre of the universe |
From our latest usability review, my agency's customers are saying that our website is looking a bit old, tired and dated.
They say it is very "about us" focused, covered in agency news items screaming 'look at me!', rather than "about them" - the customers!
Certainly many of our news messages are important (to customers), but news isn't what draws our customers to the website, it is information they become aware of when they go there to use our tools.
In the current design news is positions front and centre - where people look for important content. However the tools and resources important to our customers are pushed to the fringes - the far right or the bottom of the site.
So we're listening to our customers and I've received a go-ahead to make some changes.
The scope is the homepage and overall site template - we're not touching the primary navigation or content throughout the site.
I have set four rules for my team:
- Put customer needs first
- Use less words
- Minimise disruption
- Lift the look
Use less words:
Our home page is currently text rich - we want to cut down the words to the essential information to help customers move deeper into the site.
Minimise disruption:
We don't want to make regular visitors work harder to find tools. Even if we make tools easier to reach, this can make it harder for regulars who are habitualised to finding specific tools in particular places. This particularly goes for our main navigation, search and secure site login - none of which we want to make harder to find.
We are prepared to cause some disruption - you cannot adjust an interface without affecting some people - but we want to keep it as minimal as possible while achieving the other goals of the work.
Progress so far....
So far our web designer has put a lot of time into understand how people use our site, using all our data sources, and even asking a few real people.
From his preliminary rough design, we've had a very productive collaboration session to develop a wireframe (pic below) of how the homepage should be structured, using input from our customer research and website stats.
I've also conducted some preliminary ad hoc user testing to verify that this is regarded as a better design (it is from my small sample).
We're now fleshing out the wireframe to develop an appropriate interface pallette based on our corporate colours and fit the words we have to have before getting the design into a formal review process.
All opinions welcome!
New homepage initial wireframe
Key features
- Crest at top left
- Top menu realigned to left
- Search untouched
- Left/bottom menus untouched
- Secure login unmoved but more visible
- Important tools centred, in logical groups
- Frequently used tools buttons at right
- News items below tools with less text
- Subscribe options besides news
Has eGovernment stalled at the half-way point? |
Reading up on one of my favourite eGov blogs, In the Eye of the Storm, I found this post from February with some great slides and commentary on how far e-government has gone, but how little has changed in the last few years, e-government 3.0.
Edited 16/06: This article is further reinforced by this article in ITWeek, UK e-government fails to make the grade
Is this the same experience as we have in Australia?
It's now common to get information from government online, it's also common to transact with government online. However, can we interact with government online yet?
As in the UK, in Australia government appears to have been very slow about taking the next step - to actually converse with our customers online.
I'm happy to say that my agency is taking baby steps into interacting on forums, and we've talked about providing web-based text or voice chat to interact with customers, but are still some big steps away from this.
If the name of the game is customer service, and customers want to interact with government online (as AGIMO's latest eGovernment Satisfaction report is telling us) - why are we holding back?
Sunday, June 15, 2008
An intranet isn't an information management system, but it has a role to play |
A dilemma we're dealing with in my agency is that many projects have placed their documentation within the intranet and, over time, this has become the authoritative source of the most current copy of some documents.
This means that the owners of the content are very sensitive towards any changes to the intranet's structure which might reduce access to their pages - despite having only small audiences - because if there's an ANAO audit the intranet is the repository of the master documents.
I discourage the use of the intranet in this manner as it does not (in its current version) meet the records management requirements of the National Archives. We don't have appropriate version control, documents cannot be locked, ownership is flexible and archiving, while appropriate for an intranet, isn't up to information management standards.
However our Knowledge Management strategy does features the intranet as a major plank as it is an important tool for storing information, and a primary tool for people to communicate information.
I have seen attempts in the past to co-opt an organisation's intranet and turn it into an information management system. In these cases the intranet was developed according to the standards for digital record keeping.
This worked very well - as an information management tool. However it was lousy at communicating information to staff and lost significant credibility (and usage) - essentially nullifying one of the most important communication tools in the organisation.
The last I heard the organisation has hived off the information management parts and is seeking to regrow a conventional intranet.
I can understand why an organisation might attempt to turn an intranet into an information management system.
Good intranets are used frequently by the majority of staff, they store records (pages and files) and they are in many cases relatively easy to author and edit.
Whereas many information management systems are developed like old-style terminal systems, use strange processes to collect metadata, require enormous amounts of time to add records and are not very good at making information easy to find - unless you know precisely what you are looking for.
I've used several in the past and their usability, accessibility, design, search tool and general processes did not impress me alongside the intranet content management systems available at the time.
I can only think of one good reason why this difference exists - because information management systems have to meet lots of information storage standards - an intranet system can ignore them and make things easier for authors and users.
So should your intranet be an information management system?
My view is that it shouldn't - it should focus on what intranets do best, communicate information relevant to staff, facilitate collaboration and support staff in performing job-related tasks through being a central gateway / repository of tools and services.
If possible your intranet should also have a social aspect to help build (an appropriate) organisational culture and build staff loyalty and commitment by helping them feel like family - all work and no play makes Jack/Jill look elsewhere for an enjoyable work experience.
However intranets do have their part to play within an information management strategy.
An intranet is one of the mediums in which information is stored, and is a great tool for spreading information to those who need it within an organisation.
It is also a gateway to tools - such as an information management system - and tight integration between the two helps ensure that teams more effectively collaborate and manage their information.
I recommend that organisations consider their intranet as a 'primer' to help their staff get into the practice of information management.
First get enough of your staff using your intranet to create, store and share information through making the intranet easy to access, easier to author and full of appropriate content and tools.
Then once your staff have gotten the hang of putting content and files into an online system, introduce them to the 'real' information management system, which (in an ideal situation) integrates with the intranet and is almost as easy to use.
This way you'll not only ensure that your intranet is doing its job, but that your information management system is as well.
Presentation Zen in Sydney 4 July! |
James Robertson from Step Two Designs has organised for Garr Reynolds, presentation guru and writer of the Presentation Zen blog (and now book) to give one public event in Sydney while he's in Australia.
It's not free, but it's well worth investigating: http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/index.html
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Intranet pruning |
My team, in association with our web of content editors, recently completed a major review of the content within our intranet.
This has dramatically improved the currency of information throughout the site, with over 90% of the content having been reviewed and updated within the last year, up from slightly over 60% before I took over the intranet.
The oldest content in the site now is less than two years old, and generally these are navigational pages where the links remain current and there's no content to update.
A complaint I've heard regularly in other organisations I've worked for is that the intranet was no use as the content was old and was never updated.
This, along with search issues, appear to the two of the largest complaints about most intranets (and as was pointed out at a recent conference I attended, if you improve them but don't promote the changes staff will not change their perceptions).
The content review, considering our intranet is now around 3,000 pages in size - took around six months in total as a background task for two people alongside other work.
We were helped enormously by the content owners across the agency, who understand the importance of our intranet to the agency's day-to-day functioning. My team has also put considerable effort into building this understanding, which helps underpin the intranet's value.
There were some pages which had lost their owners due to normal organisational attrition, and when we could not identify other owners with the help of business areas we took a 'slash and burn' approach - we gave the agency's business areas a month's notice and then removing unowned pages from the live intranet to see if anyone complained.
This worked fantastically well - where pages were important there were rapid complaints and a content owner stepped forward. Given that it only takes a few seconds to restore a page, there were no long-term impacts and we now know who owns all the content in the intranet for ongoing review.
This approach may not work for all organisations, however given the large changes we're implementing at the moment, it made sense to create a little pain to avoid much greater pain in the future.
Our ongoing reviews will now be substantially smaller and the approach has also been useful in further building the credibility of our intranet as we've promoted the updating widely within the organisation.
I'd be very interested in the experiences of other managers in maintaining information currency in their online properties.
Flash in the pan - rich media use in government |
My agency, due to various factors outside direct control, has long had a reluctance to consider the use of Adobe Flash (previously Macromedia Flash) in our intranet or websites.
I can understand this - there are network and security considerations that need resolution, and Flash has only been around since 1996 (well OK I don't consider that a good reason - even government uses desktop applications and operating systems less than 12 years old).
Also Flash as a rich media application is, well, flashy. It is often overused or used incorrectly and requires skills that not all web designers or developers possess.
There are also a number of myths about Flash which cloud the issue.
Having used Flash and Adobe Director (formerly Macromedia Director) since 1996 in several hundred multimedia and web projects, I've had many experiences - mostly good but also some bad with the product.
Here's some of the lessons I have learnt - and myths busted.
Think visual not verbal
Web is still primarily a text medium, in that messages are largely conveyed via text on the screen. Also more web people seem to come out of print media than visual media. The text mindset is not appropriate for Flash and similar rich medias, which are primarily visual.
Therefore it is important to think visually, using techniques such as storyboarding rather than scripting and deliver 90% of the message via visuals and short takes rather than long written descriptions.
Use Flash sparingly - keep the purpose in mind
Flash is best used to create an effect or convey a visual message. Therefore my view is that when you need to provide navigation or blocks of content it is better to use HTML rather than Flash.
There's several reasons supporting this.
- Flash is optimal for visual not text delivery
- Flash tends to be more expensive to develop and maintain than HTML
- Flash has a longer development cycle, making it slower to update Flash websites than HTML ones - note that there are ways to separate the content from the presentation layer to make content updates easy, however changing the look still requires dedicated time
- Flash is not accepted in all environments. What happens if your customers block Flash via their firewalls? (I've encountered this direct situation in my agency - at one point we could not see the website of one of the advertising agencies pitching to us as their website was entirely constructed in Flash)
- Flash can be less accessible to people using screen readers - note the can. It is possible to make Flash accessible, but the effort required is greater.
Flash is best used in an interactive way
Think carefully before using Flash for animations that are simply for people to watch.
Online is an interactive experience and people rapidly grow bored with animations that they can only watch. For any animation consider using animated gifs instead, although they may not be as small or as smooth as a Flash alternative.
Flash is best used for interactive experiences where the user can effect changes within the Flash application by selecting alternative options.
Apply application development standards
All the normal rules of application development apply when developing interactive Flash applications.
Use a consistent interface, provide contextual help, make the user's choices clear and unambiguous, ensure there is appropriate feedback when the user selects a choice through and do not display any unnecessary choices - every choice should advance the application.
Make sure it is properly usability tested on paper or digital wireframes beforehand and iteratively tested throughout development.
Game experience makes Flash designers better
This is very much my opinion. People involved with PC, console or mobile gaming have a clearer understanding of how to create interactive applications that are also fun to use.
A Flash application that is not engaging or fun will not see much use, so adding that element in the 'gameplay' is critical to ensuring use.
Those with game experience have a different take on interface design. Whereas business applications are gray, square and non-imaginative, the best Flash applications are colourful, curvy, and dynamic.
This is because they serve different purposes and people use them at a different frequency level.
Qualifier: Note that I have been a game designer, so my view is biased. I am sure there are talented Flash designers out there who do not have experience in game design (and one day I'll meet one!)
Myths busted
- Flash is inaccessible
This is a myth I've heard repeated many times. It's untrue - Flash is not inaccessible, it simply requires a little additional effort in the approach (as all accessibility does) and that where necessary appropriately accessible alternatives be provided, such as a HTML versions. Adobe Macromedia has a great paper on the topic of Flash accessibility. - Flash files are very large
Granted, the average Flash application is indeed larger than the average HTML web page - however Flash does so much more!
Flash was developed specifically for online delivery, as such it copes well with slower connections. It provides options for streaming, background downloading or segmenting code which work very well to reduce the amount of data required before someone can begin using a Flash application.
I've recently seen an instance where an eLearning application offered animated lessons via DHTML (Dynamic HTML) or via Flash. The DHTML versions were 10x the size of the Flash versions and placed a much greater load on the network. - Flash applications cannot be indexed by search engines
This may be true for some of the older (and less used) search engines. However the leaders, particularly Google, have been able to index and search within Flash files since 2003. Adobe Macromedia also provide an SDK for website/intranet search so you can find Flash apps within your website or intranet as well! - Not many people have Flash on their PCs
It is true that Nepal and Bangladesh have low penetration rates for Flash. If you are in a country with low internet penetration or restrictive government policies it's quite likely there will not be many Flash users around.
However across the developed Western and Eastern worlds, Flash penetration exceeds 98%. - Flash doesn't separate the content, presentation and business rules layers
Actually this is an issue with inexperienced Flash designers, not Flash itself. It's very possible (and I've delivered projects in this manner) to separate these layers using XML. All of the Flash applications I produced whilst at ActewAGL used XML to feed content into the Flash presentation engine - making it simple to update text.
Boasts
Here's a couple of the Flash applications I've produced/directed in the past.
These were for edutainment purposes, but also served to support the organisation's branding and build awareness amongst future customers.
Note I'm NOT a Flash designer - these were designed by specialists, I was responsible for concept and ongoing direction.
- Power up a rock concert - taught children about the need to use different energy sources to replace coal power.
- Energy saving fun house - used at several major events to show children different ways to save energy and water in their homes
- Utilities timeline - a historical timeline of the development of utilities such as telecommunications, water and power
Friday, June 13, 2008
W3C launches public eGovernment forum |
The W3C launched a public forum last week that aims to explore how to use internet technologies to improve governance and citizen participation.
Termed the eGovernment Interest Group (eGov IG), there's an open invitation to any person or organisation interested in eGovernment to join the forum.
More information is over at http://www.w3.org/2007/eGov/IG/
The charter of the eGov IG is an interesting read.
Tell me the topics you'd like covered in my eMetrics presentation |
I'll be speaking at Ark Group's conference Driving Interoperability and Collaboration in eGovernment in Brisbane in late August on the topic of eMetrics - using them to benchmark and drive the ongoing success of eGovernment initiatives.
If you're planning to attend this conference - or even if you're not - let me know via comments to this post the areas you'd like to see covered within the eMetrics topic and I'll endeavour to cover them in my presentation.
My presentation will be posted on my slideshare site and blog after the event.
For an extract from one of my previous conference presentations on the eMetrics topic, see my post eMetrics primer
For the full presentation I gave on web strategy recently at a conference, see my post Web Strategy in Sydney
Blogging guidelines |
Blogging is still a new phenomenon for many people, while it has been around as an activity for thousands of years in a paper form (diaries) and public 'blogging' existed long before the internet in the form of biographies, newspaper columns and radio shows.
Given there are reportedly 112 million blogs active, and thousands of new blogs started every day, there's a very good change that there's at least a handful of people in any organisation who are actively sharing their thoughts online in a blog.
Magnify this by all the online forums, chat groups, social mediums (such as MySpace and Facebook) and I think that every organisation needs to think about having a corporate policy or at least guidelines on what their employees can say publicly online, just as they have policies for speaking to the media, customers and competitors.
These should also apply for internal blogs - which could also take the form of executive newsletters via email or intranets.
These guidelines are not to stop people from communicating online on legitimate topics, nor to force them into a narrow range of acceptable areas, they are to provide ground rules for how people are to represent the organisation and advise employees of their responsibilities.
However they also form part of the employee code of conduct and therefore before enforceable where there are persistent breaches that place the organisation or its staff and customers at risk.
In the last organisation I worked in I developed the blogging policy in co-ordination with the legal team. It wasn't particularly hard as there are many good examples of these policies online.
My current agency doesn't have explicit guidelines at this time, I've had a discussion about it with appropriate people but have not had the time to follow this up, however the APLS guidelines actually do a fairly good job in a general sense of covering the area.
I'm going to pick this up again in the next few months - given that I'm aware of at least 5 people in my agency who maintain personal blogs, we're beginning to engage officially in online forums and there are at least 50 people at work involved in online networks such as Facebook and Linkedin I can see that there is a need for more explicit guidelines for public comment in the online medium.
Here's some good examples of corporate blogging policies and structures to create them:
- Comparison of 8 corporate bloging policies
- Links to guidelines from around 20 organisations
- Blog and forum participation guidelines
- Executive blogging guidelines
- IBM's blogging and social media guideines
- Feedster's blogging guidelines
eObama - the US Presidential election goes digital |
I've been watching the campaign for the Democratic nomination for the US presidency with 'shock and awe'.
This has been the first election to see social media become a significant factor in the outcome - even (in many commentators' opinions) the deciding factor.
There has been very little coverage of this in Australia and I'm not sure how aware many Australians are at the high degree of impact the online channel has had on the outcome.
However in the US and in the UK the shift in election focus from presentation to participation has been widely discussed and dissected.
Leading commentators have compared it to the shift in the 1960s when television first became a factor in US politics and Kennedy demolished Nixon in a televised debate - not because he made better points, but because he presented better on camera.
...the Obama campaign has shattered the top-down, command-and-control, broadcast-TV model that has dominated American politics since the early 1960s.
"They have taken the bottom-up campaign and absolutely perfected it," says Joe Trippi, who masterminded [Democrat candidate Howard] Dean's Internet campaign in 2004. "It's light-years ahead of where we were four years ago. They'll have 100,000 people in a state who have signed up on their Web site and put in their zip code. Now, paid organizers can get in touch with people at the precinct level and help them build the organization bottom up. That's never happened before. It never was possible before."
The Machinery of Hope - Rolling Stone Magazine (20/03/2008)
How Barack Obama won the online market
Barack Obama's staff - led by one of the founders of Facebook - developed the my.barackobama.com website before he announced his nomination. This site combined all the elements of social media, election-style.
It allowed grass-root supporters to organise local precinct and state-based support chapters, create mailing lists, develop websites, blogs and online forums.
This led to the formation of hundreds of local groups, who were able to organise and mobilise rapidly and, while organised outside the campaign machine, could be co-ordinated with it when Obama's paid campaign workers arrived in an area ahead of a vote.
The site also spearheaded the donations machine for the campaign. It allowed the creation and division of phone lists, contained pre-developed scripts for supporters (to cold call people for donations) and naturally allows people to make donations directly from the home page.
As a result Obama raised a record sum of over US$270 million in donations at last count to support his campaign,. This is roughly US$50 million more than Clinton (whose campaign now owes about US$20 million) - see Open Secrets for the details of funds raised.
Remember that when Obama announced he would run Clinton was the clear front-runner. He has come from a long way behind to take the nomination, enabled by his powerful online organisation.
So how was this all kept a secret during the campaign?
It wasn't. Below are a selection of articles dissecting Obama's online machine and, in many cases, providing details of its inner workings.
- Politics 2.008 - American Journalism Review (June/July 2007)
- Obama Campaign Masters Digital Media While McCain Efforts are "Old and Clunky" - JackMyers.com (10/06/2008)
- The 21st Century Election - PoliticsOnline (04/06/2008)
- Barack Obama is master of the new Facebook politics - Times Online (25/05/2008)
- Internet key to Obama victories - BBC (22/05/2008)
- Will the US election be won on Facebook? - CNN (01/05/2008)
- Barack Obama is Rocking the Youth Vote - SearchEngineWatch (17/04/2008)
- The revolution will not be televised - Tokblog (April 2008)
- The Machinery of Hope - Rolling Stone Magazine (20/03/2008)
- How Barack Obama is Using Web and Enterprise 2.0 in the US Primary Campaign Through Central Desktop - Portals and KM (05/03/2008)
- Obama's Web Marketing triumph - Fortune Magazine (03/03/2008)
- Inside Obama's surging Net-roots campaign - Wired Magazine (03/03/08)
- Democrat Barack Obama: 2008 Presidential Candidates & Online Marketing Strategies - Search Marketing Gurus (08/01/2008)
- Barack Obama, Social Networking King - Washington Post (06/10/2007)
So if all of this was known - why didn't Clinton copy and improve on it?
The simple answer is that Obama's campaign was run by Digital Natives - people brought up using the internet or who understand and make use of it's amazing potential as a way to connect and empower individuals at the grassroots, organise and co-ordinate resources and create new paths to solve old problems.
Clinton's campaign staff were focused on traditional, tried-and-true command and control ways of running campaigns and simply did not have the capacity to change mindsets in time to stop the Obama juggernaut.
Traditional media is based on command and control. But the digital world is all about grassroots. Traditional media is about authority. Digital is about authenticity.
You can see it in the language they use. Obama uses the language of "we and you," which is inclusive and nods to the wisdom of the crowds. She [Clinton] uses "I and me." His stuff is about "yes, you can." Which is about the buyer. She talks about "experience from day one." That's about the seller. That doesn't resonate anymore.
Obama's Web Marketing triumph - Fortune Magazine (03/03/2008)
I wonder which politician or organisation will next be able to replicate Obama's success?
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Did you blog today? |
Blogging cannot really be seen as a fringe activity anymore, with over 112 million blogs in existence around the world (as counted by Technorati, the world's leading blog tracker).
Within this number there are a number of blogs written by senior executives, public officials and politicians.
However these 'official' blogs are rarer than hen's teeth in Australia.
This article, brought to my attention by Smartbrief (one of my favourite enewsletters), provides a great deal of information on the reasons why senior executives and public officials should be blogging, and the benefits they can bring to an organisation.
Have you written your blog today?
Lots of CEOs and senior execs are blogging as a way to communicate with employees -- and increase search engine rankings. Pundits say "blogs help disseminate a company's message, answer public criticism and develop a relationship between the public and the company's most visible figures." KansasCity.com/Detroit Free Press (6/3)
Should government agencies websites still be designed with 800x600 monitor resolutions in mind? |
Every time I have redesigned a website or intranet over the last 12 years I have asked the question of what is the minimum monitor resolution we need to support for customers.
I was very glad when we could stop catering for 640x480 resolution and make the new minimum 800x600.
Since then each time I check I have still found a dedicated minority of users (down to around 2-3% now) still on 800x600 resolution monitors.
Over the past three years I've seen a number of major sites move to 1024x768 as the minimum resolution (including most news media sites) - for a large commercial entity it may make sense to abandon the few remaining 800x600 users to focus on their more lucrative audiences.
With today's computers starting with a default resolution of 1024x768, the users still on 800x600 are most likely to be older, have poor vision or a vintage computer. They may be using internet access in public areas or simply not have the knowledge or confidence to change their monitor resolution.
These are the people most likely to draw on government services, so my conclusion is that government agencies cannot leave these people behind.
However if government has a commitment to serving all citizens it must also ensure that the other 90%+ of people are well catered for. Presenting a fixed 800x600 site, or even an expanding site which simply increases the whitespace at higher resolutions doesn't provide additional value for the majority of users.
It could be considered reverse discrimination - limiting citizens who own modern computers and have good eyesight to basic 800x600 pixels worth of information at a time.
So my view is that while government agencies must support 800x600, they must also seriously consider adaptive designs through the use of css (Cascading Style Sheets) - a standard HTML tool - to present better designed and more effective websites for the majority of citizens.
Effective use of government mapping data |
This is a great presentation on exploiting location-based information, following on from my post on mashups.
Baby steps into extranets |
When I joined the public service a few years back I was very pleased to discover that my agency was very proactive about engaging stakeholders when creating products and services for our customers.
The agency was still using 20th century methods to achieve these outcomes and was making no use of online collaborative groups or extranets.
This isn't a criticism of the people or the systems - the agency had developed the skills to manage this collaboration using the readily available technologies - email, mail, phones, faxes and face-to-face meetings. Since these were working well there had not been the need or money available to innovate new ways of engaging.
However over the last few years the tempo has accelerated.
The agency has placed a greater focus on stakeholder consultation, the level and complexity of engagement has increased and there has been the need to involve more players in approval processes. At the same time the agency has needed to manage its staffing levels carefully.
When most types of system double in size the effort required to manage and maintain them increases much more than double. This is because the connections between the different parts of the system increase exponentially.
For example, if you draw four dots on a piece of paper they can be connected in 6 possible ways (3+2+1), however 8 dots can be connected in 28 possible ways (7+6+5+4+3+2+1).
While it could be argued that as all these extra stakeholders deal with the agency as the central organiser the complexity doesn't increase that much - theoretically all these interactions can be fed into a central point at the agency, like spokes on a wheel.
However in reality the interactions between the stakeholders are an important factor and this is where all the additional potential connections come into play.
So with increasing need, increasing complexity and fixed or diminishing resources an important questions becomes;
How does the agency manage this on an ongoing basis - and do so cost-effectively?
This is where my Online Communications Team been able to add value to the process. We've worked with the stakeholder managers to introduce an approach that is both freely available and totally government approved - an online collaborative wiki.
We've established two collaborative communities for my agency using the Govdex platform provided by AGIMO. This wiki-based system is secure, readily configurable to agency needs, has support available and is free to use by government departments. Best of all it's easy for the relevant groups in the agency to manage themselves, with my team simply providing back up and account managing the Govdex relationship.
As we're in early days yet and learning as we go, the two communities we've established are internally focused. One is supporting the ongoing development of our intranet and helping the agency's online team understand the capabilities of such a system (so we can stay a few steps ahead of other users).
The other is a knowledgebase and discussion forum for the agency's stakeholder engagement officers across Australia. This is the prototype for a future system for engaging with our stakeholders across the country.
The experience of setting up these systems has been largely painless. Other than some issues with the access speed within our firewall, which appear to be due to government networks not playing nice with each other and are rapidly being resolved, our Govdex experience has begun as a positive one.
I'd particularly like to commend the customer service provided by Govdex - they have helped us get the sites up and running in record time.
I'm now in the process of beginning to promote Govdex as a business tool within my agency so that anyone who has the need to deal with a set of internal and external stakeholders can consider it as a potential solution to their communication and collaboration needs.
Note that Govdex and similar online collaboration systems aren't a replacement for face-to-face meetings, phone calls or emails, but they are another tool that can be used to facilitate and manage complex collaboration situations in a cost-effective manner.
By the way - here's a great presentation on GovDex from the Web Directions Government conference on May 19 2008 - Ralph Douglas - GovDex: Collaborating online in a secure environment
Happy birthday Mr Internet... |
This year is the 50 year anniversary of the creation of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency(ARPA) in the US in response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik I, the world's first artificial satellite.
ARPA went on to create ARPANet - the first computer network and the genesis of the internet.
It is also the 15th anniversary of Mosaic, the world's first graphical internet browser (there was no 'world-wide-web' before Mosaic).
Vanity Fair has published an article drawing from interviews with some of the pioneers of the internet entitled, How the internet was won.
It's an interesting glimpse of how the 4th mass media came to be and a great read for anyone who wants more context on why the internet has developed as it has.
I also found it very interesting that this article was in the Entertainment and Culture section of Vanity Fair NOT in a Technology section.
Here in Australia - particularly in the public sector - I've noticed the tendency to consider the internet and websites as a technology tool or IT application.
In the US thinking has progressed further and the internet is recognised as a communications and interaction medium that enables communities and cultural development.
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 coming in August |
It's always been my view that organisations needs to ensure that their websites are fully usable and accessible in the most commonly used web browsers.
This makes it critical for online professionals to keep a weather eye on developments in the web browser market - particularly on the market leaders, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.
Microsoft has just announced when the second beta of Internet Explorer 8 will become available, making this a good time to begin preparing your organisation's external websites to be compliant.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Set the data free! Mash it up! |
Mashups are, in my opinion, a fantastic tool for allowing people to creatively use data to solve problems or create value.
For those unfamiliar with the term, it refers to situations where individuals or organisations combine (mashup) data from different sources, often in real-time across the internet to provide hybrid applications.
Some of the more interesting mashups I've seen have involved adding real-time public transport, job vacancies, photos, house sales or rental data from one or more websites to maps stored on another website.
Some of the better known mashups include:
- Flickrvision - photos on maps,
- Bikely - cycle routes around the world,
- HousingMaps - drawn from Craig's List and Google maps to create a location-based view of properties for rent or sale,
- Twittervision - tracking real time 'twitters' (mini blog posts) around the world - I find it a very zen experience to watch, and
- WAPetrol - a mashup showing the cheapest places to buy petrol in WA.
There are plenty more listed at the Google Maps Mania blog.
The only recent example I've seen even nominally in the public arena within Australia was Google's Australian election mash-up last year. This was a world first, combining electorate information, news stories, video and Google maps into an interactive picture of Australian politics.There's an introductory video to this mash-up at YouTube.
I expect we'll see an even more slick version for the US election this year.
The Bureau of Meteorology does makes its data available to third party websites for use in mashups. While I was at ActewAGL we used this data (with their permission) to provide weather information about the ACT - though it functioned more as a feed than a mashup.
We were also working towards creating internal mashups of our sales and customer details to gain a better picture of the demographic spread, effectiveness of location-based marketing and to give us another axis with which to develop customer insights. I do not know if this project has progressed since I left the organisation.
There's plenty of other private sector mashups emerging - some used for commercial purposes, such as the maps in RealEstate.com.au, but the public sector is strangely silent.
I'd love to see the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) mashup some of its data, or make data available in a form usable in mashups. I'm sure it would stimulate some interesting uses which in turn might lead to new insights.
I've also been slowly moving my Agency towards using some of our publicly released data, together with Google maps, to provide a basic social picture of Australia. This is information is already provided in list form so it's an easy first step.
Unfortunately there's plenty of more important activities on our radar, so we're not there yet - though I did manage in my own time to create an electorate map of Australia and embed some of our public data within it.
Over in the US there's a lot more activity, dating back several years. The mid-2006 article Emerging eGovernment mashups provides an early look at some of the uses the US public sector is developing for mash-ups.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Lean forward not back! |
This is a great Alertbox article from usability guru Jakob Neilsen regarding writing for the web versus the print medium….
Writing Style for Print vs. Web
In summary:
I've spent many columns explicating the differences between the Web and television, which can be summarized as lean-forward vs. lean-back:
- On the Web, users are engaged and want to go places and get things done. The Web is an active medium.
- While watching TV, viewers want to be entertained. They are in relaxation mode and vegging out; they don't want to make choices. TV is a passive medium.
This doesn't mean that you can't have entertaining websites or informative TV shows. But it does mean that the two media's contrasting styles require different approaches to entertainment and education.
The differences between print and the Web may not seem as strong, but to achieve optimal results, each requires a distinct content style.
eMetrics primer |
eMetrics is a personal interest of mine.
Being able to measure what actions people take and what information they use is, in my opinion, one of the key differentiators between the online channel and other communications mediums.
I find that the insights into customer and staff behaviour gained through eMetrics provides a solid basis for improvements to websites and intranets. It's also hard evidence that can be used to bring others onboard.
However using the wrong eMetrics can lead to all kinds of problems. I feel it's vital to understand what you are measuring, and why you should be using it.
Below is a brief primer using slides from a presentation I gave at a conference in 2007.
What's the difference between the Bureau of Meteorology and a movie star? |
Why is it that movie and sports stars, who are already earning millions for their public performances, feel the need to lend their reputations to endorse products such as lipstick, running shoes and advanced hair restoration treatments?
Of course there's the money and the extra public exposure to build their celebrity status and it helps stars leverage their reputations to support important causes, influencing the views of millions - but besides these obvious rewards, why would they behave in such a manner?
I'm sure this is a question often pondered at the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), who own the most trafficked government website in Australia (based on the Hitwise data I've seen).
From visiting the BOM's site I don't know if they've successfully answered this question as yet.
The BOM site is a tour-de-force of weather information. From the homepage it's possible to literally take Australia's temperature - and check if it's raining outside too!
For the average citizen, this wealth of meteorological information is vitally important for starting those awkward conversations with strangers, "Nice weather we're having - I've just checked the BOM website and it's 30 degrees outside".
For many other Australians this information is vital to their planning and financial wellbeing. Farmers rely on this information to make decisions on planting, harvesting and water use. Sailors and fishermen need to know the latest conditions at sea. Aviators need to check the winds before they take to the skies.
All of this information is needed by citizens on a daily basis - so it's no wonder that the BOM's site manages to consistently reach more Australians each day than other government website juggernauts, such as the Australian Tax Office, Centrelink or Australia.gov.au.
But do they really leverage these visitors well?
At a second glance at the BOM homepage, there's a small area promoting the BOM's 100 year anniversary and a couple of links to allow people to learn more about meteorology.
There's also a small link at the bottom of the page (below the fold) to the Australian government locator service (AGLS) and links to the BOM's Department, to Australia.gov.au (but named 'Federal Government') and to the Prime Minister's website.
However there's no links to other government services that would be of use to the many sailors, farmers and aviators visiting the BOM's site.
This is the difference between the BOM and a movie star.
The movie star leverages their relationship with their fans to present them with appropriate products and services that may be of interest to them.
The BOM misses a major trick in joined-together government by not doing the same with services across the public sphere, and then using these connections to further increase its own star appeal and audience.
Monday, June 09, 2008
Anatomy of LinkedIn |
Here's a very interesting presentation from Linkedin's Principal Software Engineer, Nick Dellamaggiore, exploring the 'guts' of one of my favourite networking sites.
It provides some insight into what is required to deliver an effective social media site.
Note that it is technically orientated, so can be hard to follow without the context of the speaker.
LinkedIn - A Professional Network built with Java Technologies and Agile Practices
Sunday, June 08, 2008
12th Webby awards announced - beauty remains in the mind of the beholder |
The Webby Awards are beginning to resemble the Oscars in their level of hype.
However as the most prestigious global award for digital media I can excuse them the need to make their mark alongside the older media awards.
The Government winner this year was the Peace Corps for their teen site.
It's an attractive marketing site, with a consistently strong theme and subtle interactivity.
The People's Voice Winner in the category was the Transport for London site.
While not as pretty, this is significantly more functional as a 'working' site designed to deliver services day in, day out.
The two sites are excellent examples of the pressures in the online world - stunning visual design (form) or clear consistent functionality.
Humans as a species react strongly to design - take our ongoing love affair with fashion or architecture for example.
This isn't limited to the physical world - beauty is in the eye and mind of the beholder. Our thoughts and, particularly, our feelings, colour how we respond to any digital product.
Of course design must also be useable - but isn't that one of the qualities of good design?
Government has some legislative considerations to ensure websites are usable and accessible, which often appear to bias us us towards focusing on function at the expense of form.
However as online communications we must keep in mind that form, the visual and interactive design, is equally important in winning the hearts, minds and ongoing use of citizens.
We have photogenic politicians, can we please have more attractive government websites?
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Innovative Intranets |
Here are some great ideas from Step Two Designs in a presentation resulting from their Innovative Intranets Awards this year.
It includes a voiceover from James Robertson
What do innovative intranets look like?
Usability Rules - OK? |
My Agency has just finished a nine-month long independent expert usability review of all of our online properties - website, intranet and secure online transaction service.
Needless to say most of the results matched what we already knew
- our website needs more of a customer-focus and is due for a facelift,
- our intranet needs reorganisation to match how our staff need to access information and tools, and
- our customers cannot tell the difference between our website and our secure transaction service - nor should they need to.
This is probably about the 10th time in the last ten years I've engaged consultants to carry out one type of review or another and, in almost every case, the major findings matched what we already knew.
Naturally there were some surprises - but if the people who manage the properties are already 70-80% right, why is it so important to call in the consultants?
The cynical response, and one I've floated out there from time to time, is that organisations don't trust the experience and expertise of their staff.
This is similar to the principle where for some products you sell more if you raise the price - as people believe if the price is higher so must be the quality.
Staff are a sunk cost, so there's no apparent further investment to justify the quality of an outcome.
This works well for consultants, who can build their credibility and reputation by simply charging more - though they do have to deliver in the end.
However I've never really liked it as a reason - both because I'd like to think that employers recognise the skills of their employees (or wouldn't have hired them), and because it only addresses the issue of trust, not the issue of whether the work needs to be done.
After years of thinking on this topic, involving many research projects and other consultant-led activities, I've come to the conclusion that the real reason for bringing in the external experts is simply that 'we don't know what we don't know'.
It's great to sit back in an organisation and say that a piece of research taught us nothing that we didn't already know - but is that really the case.
Even if you are 80% correct on what your customers wanted (after the fact), the other 20% may be the most vital piece of the puzzle. As we become close to our work and acculturalised to the organisation it becomes impossible to take off those rose-coloured glasses and see our online properties (or other products and services) in the same way as our customers.
Of course I have had other reasons for using independent experts over the years - to train staff, to substitute money for time we didn't have, and to ensure that politically and legally we had something signed to point at "but the consultant said that..."
But my main reason in almost every case has been that most powerful reason of all - I don't know what I don't know, and I'm unable to take off my glasses to find out.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
New ActewAGL epayment site |
A quick plug for an organisation I used to work for, ActewAGL, the integrated utility provider in the ACT have just released their new-look epayment website.
It's a great example of a balance between effective design, usability and the corporate profit motive.
While I personally have a few small quibbles with the design (for example the log-in area would be better placed above the green message), it's been great to see them make the commitment to encouraging more customers to transact online.
Online transactions are a clear win-win situation. They are lower cost for the organisation to manage, and add a green tinge to aid in marketing efforts. At the same time it allows customers at least the illusion of being in control of the relationship.
By the way, I was responsible for the current design of the ActewAGL, TransACT and Grapevine sites (within certain corporate limits) so by all means blame me for any difficulties in using those sites.
My successor in the role has made some further improvements but, like anyone coming into a role relatively soon after a new design has been put in place, these have had to fit in with the existing interface.
Sunday, June 01, 2008
eGovernment in Australia is like a chocolate éclair |
There is some exciting activity happening in the Australian eGovernment scene.
States such as Victoria, Queensland and WA have taken major steps to standardise their online approaches across departments. At local level South Australia has introduced a phenomenal content management system that allows every council to have a well structured website, providing access to the key services they offer while still supporting individuality and innovation.
However at a Federal level it appears to me that eGovernment activity is more patchy.
Certainly there are fantastic applications such as e-tax from the Australian Tax Office (ATO), and the 2007 eCensus from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
But across the Federal Government there is little consistency as to how websites and eGovernment applications are designed, built or managed. Standards for reporting to allow ready comparisons across government sites do not exist and there are few efficiencies in coding or content management across departments or even within agencies across websites and intranets.
AGIMO (the Australian Government Information Management Office) did some sterling work a few years ago to develop a set of Better Practice Checklists and Guides for Federal government sites, however these are not enforceable, aging and do little to 'rein in' Agencies who go their own way.
Personally I've spoken with AGIMO several times to get their position on email marketing, wikis, blogs and participation in stakeholder forums and social media - unfortunately there are no guidelines and little knowledge of what is actually occurring in these spaces across the Government sector.
On this basis, while eGovernment does have a firm outer later, full of chocolatey goodness, the core is simply mush.
There are a number of steps I have identified that would allow Australia's Federal Government to begin realising the efficiencies and benefits that could be delivered via the online channel.
These include:
- Auditing the online channel within all Government departments to gain an understanding of the websites/intranets/extranets they run, support or engage with, the (software) systems they use, the governance in place and their strategic plans for the channel.
- Establishing and maintaining a register of key people working in the online area (business and IT people) across Departments who can cross-fertilise and support agency initiatives.
- Establishing appropriate and standardised reporting metrics that can be audited by the ANAO and guarantee that senior management and ministerial staff are provided with the same type of information no matter which agency. This may also include standardising on a core set of web measurement technologies.
- Establish strong guidelines on appropriate governance across website, intranet and extranet management.
- Create guidelines for engagement via the online channel - approaches for using social media and two-way communications tools in an effective, responsible and governable manner.
- Create National and State panels of suppliers across key areas, such as content management, search technologies, web design, mobile web design, rich media development, email marketing, mobile marketing and similar online areas that any Agency can draw on.
- Establish national standards around interface design - as simple as whether to place 'OK' or 'Cancel' to the left, using the same term for 'Firstname' and as complex as is needed. Due to how Agencies are so tied to their existing 'standards' no matter how different it is from other Agencies', there needs to be muscle to enforce this, perhaps with the involvement of the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO).
- Negotiate Government-wide head-level agreements with key providers so that smaller Agencies can access the tools and services they need to develop their online channel at an appropriate cost and support level.
- Build a government-wide library of common tools, code and 'widgets' which Agencies can draw on and reuse within their own systems. If the ongoing management and development of these common tools is an issue I'm sure appropriate arrangements can be developed to allow Agencies to contribute what they can afford while still benefiting - after all we're all the same eGovernment and all the money comes from the same source.
- Establish National training standards for staff in the online area - both business and technical - to ensure that citizens receive a similar standard of service online, just as is expected from telephone or face-to-face services.
The situation isn't all gloom and doom (how gloomy can a chocolate éclair be) - there are some initiatives which have begun to address some of my goals above.
Govdex is a prime example, a centrally provided wiki system (using Confluence - my second favourite wiki system behind MediaWiki) that any Agency can use to facilitate engagement. I have implemented two wikis using the system and while it appears not all agencies 'play nice' as yet (it's hideously slow in our office), I have nothing but praise for the organisation supporting the application and for AGIMO's work in providing the service.
Another initiative is the AGOSP program, also from AGIMO - which will see Agencies be able to access a central forms system for citizen forms, as they can already do for business forms and aims to strengthen Australia.gov.au as the central point for online engagement with Government.
However from my perspective it appears that most Federal Agencies are siloed - each doing their own research, design, development, system selection, governance and ongoing management - taking few learnings from others and definitely not sharing experiences to any great extent.
Perhaps one day in the far future eGovernment in Australia will develop that extra hard gobstopper core - but for now, in my humble opinion, it remains an éclair.
