Cost cutting is a fact of life across public and private sectors.
At some point every few years (or every year in some cases) organisations decide that the most effective way to improve productivity or profits is to reduce expenditures.
Intranets are a common target of cost cutting, either by delaying improvements to infrastructure, cancelling new functionality, reducing author training or cutting intranet staff numbers.
In some cases these decisions are justified, however with intranets often lacking high-level representation and sponsorship, there are cases where these cuts have serious negative impacts on the entire organisation.
So are there ways to position an intranet to avoid damaging cost cuts, and even increase the budget to the area in order to generate savings elsewhere?
I believe there are - and ways to make the intranet a central tool in a cost savings approach.
It may seem counter-intuitive to some, but I often advocate increasing intranet funding during cost cutting exercises as a lower cost channel for engaging staff and sharing information.
However for this to get traction, there are some preventative steps I believe an intranet manager needs to take to position the intranet,
1) Quantify and promote usage and satisfaction with the intranet
The value of an intranet is largely measured on the amount of use it receives by staff. This measure is, however, often more driven by perception than by actual numbers.
This is because senior leadership is generally the group least likely to make extensive use of an intranet - they have staff to make use of it on their behalf. However this group may (mistakenly) believe that intranet usage reflects their own personal use of the channel.
Quantifying and promoting the actual levels of intranet usage and satisfaction (and what functions staff are using) helps senior management understand the true value of the channel to the organisation beyond their personal experience. This leads to according it a higher priority within organisational planning.
During cost cutting this knowledge can shift the discussion from the potential savings in cutting back on intranet services to the increased cost of shifting to less efficient (and more expensive) communications and information sharing channels.
2) Identify a senior-level sponsor
Given that an intranet can benefit all parts of an organisation, provided the intranet's benefits and usage are quantitified and promoted, it becomes easier to identify a senior-level sponsor.
The most useful sponsor (for an intranet manager) is the senior executive with most to gain from an effective intranet - normally from a group with a significant need to share information or communicate in the most efficient way possible.
It is also important that the sponsor's area is regarded as business critical by the organisation, thereby ensuring they are well listened to in senior meetings.
3) Take appropriate steps to increase intranet awareness and usage
This should be an ongoing activity for all intranet managers.
Find out what tools or information would aid staff, make them available via the intranet and promote their availability.
This progressively grows an intranet's presence within an organisation while providing cost-savings as people aggregate towards the channel rather than using less efficient ways of accessing the tools and information they need in their roles.
4) Identify business processes the intranet can perform more cost-effectively than via other channels
This is the 'meat' in the cost-cutting sandwich. Before, or during, cost-cutting initiatives, it is important to identify productivity gains and business process efficiencies that can be moved by shifting functions to the intranet channel from other channels.
Start by building a list of potential efficiencies based on areas of savings including;
With the above preventative measures in place, the next time your organisation needs to cut costs your intranet can be positioned as a tool to support cost savings rather than as a service to be trimmed.
Also see:
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Cut costs by expanding your intranet |
Blog post discussed in podcast report |
I've posted earlier about how the Holz and Hobson report picked up on one of my posts and decided to use it as the central topic of one of their radio shows.
The show was held a little over a week ago, and I realised I'd not yet linked to it in eGovAU, so here it is.
FIR Call-In Show #7: The employee communications-intranet connection
The show can be downloaded or listened to online.
Greater transparency in government - the US theme for 2008 |
The most exciting change I'm seeing in US politics at the moment is the degree of top level support and enthusiasm for transparency in government.
Nextgov has published an article, Obama says he would use IT to open government, which details the strategies the Democrat nominee for President says he will mandate for the US Federal Government to increase their accountability to the public, reducing waste and improving openness.In the plan, Obama says he "will require his appointees who lead the executive branch departments and rulemaking agencies to conduct the significant business of the agency in public, so that any citizen can see in person or watch on the Internet as the agencies debate and deliberate the issues that affect American society. Videos of meetings will be archived on the Web, and the transcript will be available to the public. Obama will also require his appointees to commit to employ all the technological tools available to allow average citizens not just to observe, but to participate and be heard on the issues that affect their daily lives. Obama will require Cabinet officials to have periodic 21st century fireside chats, restore meaning to the Freedom of Information Act, and conduct regulatory agency business in public."
Obama has indicated that he will push the use of blogs, wikis, social networking and other strategies to create a government more connected with constituents.
The full plan is available at Government Executive.
It's both an ambitious plan and an exciting experiment in the government arena. If Obama gets the opportunity to execute, it will be interesting to see the consequences of more open government both in the US's domestic market and in international relations.
Virtual government conferences - when will they start in Australia? |
I find conferences a very useful avenue for networking with other egovernment and online channel professionals. I often get ideas or insights that I can share across my team and agency - and implement in our sites.
However the attendance cost continues to rise. Sadly both the commitment in time and price means that I've been cutting back to a few selected courses each year.
I've partially offset the price factor by speaking at events (giving a 40 minute presentation to attend a 2 day $3,000 conference is equivalent to an 'hourly rate' of $4,500).
However this still leaves travel and accomodation costs and the time required to participate (which I can never get back).
A solution I'm seeing more of around the world is to hold virtual conferences - such as the Cognos Virtual Government Forum being held using INXPO's platform.
There are options for similar events via platforms such as Second Life and Webex, as well as ways to use free tools to achieve a similar end.
While these events have a lower networking factor than a face-to-face event (though it can still occur), they provide a similar presentation experience - with the capacity to pick and choose between canned or live presentations and engage in chat-based Q&A sessions or panels.
You do not need to leave your desk, and can tune out for other priorities, then catch-up again at your leisure.
So given the large size and low population density of Australia, when are we likely to see some locally run virtual conferences?
Friday, September 26, 2008
Australian Human Rights commission launches site to name and shame government agencies failing accessibility measures |
Further to my post, Australian Human Rights Commission prepared to name and shame government publishers failing online accessibility, the Human Rights Commission has now launched a website that lists government agencies failing to meet their legal obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992.
The site, named Webwatch is visible in the Human Right Commission's site.
The media release announcing the site's launch, WebWatch launched amid moves to improve website accessibility, also made reference to a motion passed by the Senate regarding accessibility of information which helps underscore the importance of making government information accessible online.The Senate yesterday agreed to the following motion, put by Tasmania’s Senator Stephen Parry at the request of Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Community Services, Senator Cory Bernardi:
That the Senate:
(a) notes the difficulties experienced by people with a disability, particularly people with vision impairment, in accessing some formats of Senate documents online; and
(b) calls on the Government and the Department of the Senate to ensure all Hansard and Senate committee documents are made accessible via the Internet to people with a disability as soon as they become public.
What do job seekers think about your department? |
Just as organisations can use social network sites to judge the relative merits of potential staff (per my post Locating and learning about future public employees), websites are allowing people to judge the relative merits of potential employers.
How does your department rate?
There's no doubt that people research potential employers online, and in a 'seller's market' for skilled labour it's critical for employers to put their best foot forward.
There are some fantastic job seeker/careers sections in organisational websites - with IBM, Microsoft and Intel having always stood out for me as offering exceptionally good information for job seekers - not surprising given the calibre of the people they wish to attract.
My agency is progressively improving its job section for a similar reason. There's a limited pool of talented people and we need to present them with good reasons as to why they should choose us over other organisations - whether public or private.
Some of the features I consider important in a jobs section include;
- Complete job information - everything a job seeker needs to apply online
- Support tools to make it easier to apply for jobs - particularly for those who are not good at expressing themselves on paper (but shine in interviews) or are unfamiliar with the documentation required by your organisation (such as public sector selection criteria)
- Explanation of the process and timeframes for recruitment (so they don't take another job when they've heard nothing for four weeks) - even better is to provide a 'package delivery' model whereby they can log in to see where their job application is up to in your process at any time (like Fed Express and DHL)
- Information helping employees to understand your organisation's purpose and goals
- Details on why your organisation is a good place to work (pay is rarely the top reason!)
- Social aspects of your organisation - how do the strangers you employ become part of your organisational family
- Developmental opportunities, training and challenges
- Community initiatives - how does your organisation participate with the broader community and 'give back' effort, time and support
- Information (profiles) on your locations (what it's like to work in particular offices)
- Support for people who may be relocating (particularly for Canberra or country town locations)
- Profiles of different career tracks and jobs in your organisation, based on people doing those roles and why they like them
- Career selector tools which support people in finding the jobs in your organisation which best match their disposition and skills (such as at DEEWR's Jobjuice site)
It's also important to consider factors beyond your own website.
Job seekers are influenced by their peers, by news and community sites, social networking sites, online encyclopedias, by recruitment websites and by specialist employer rating sites such as Glassdoor (discussed in the Sydney Morning Herald article, In good company).
Personally I keep a eye out on highly influential sites for Australians, such as LinkedIn, Wikipedia and Facebook, as well as the job sites and popular forums discussing child support topics.
I also monitor where people go when entering and exiting our websites, which provides an indication of other sites which may influence job seeker preferences.
What does your organisation do online to help attract the best applicants?
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Participative budget edemocracy initiative in Brazil provides insights into the future |
Brought to my attention by a reader, the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte, capital of the state of Minas Gerais, has begun using evoting to support it's participatory budget setting process.
Documented in the research report, e-Participatory Budgeting: e-Democracy from theory to success? (PDF), the experience is a very interesting example of the use of evoting in increasing direct democratic participation by the public.
Belo Horizonte is a city of 2.3 million people and 1.7 million voters.
It has used a participatory budget setting process since 1993 to prioritise spending across a range of public works, with the budget directly allocated by voters growing to US$43. This works on the basis of voting in each of the city's districts for specific works within that district.
In 2006, the city launched a Digital Participatory Budgeting (e-PB) involving a fund of US$11 million in addition to the existing participatory budget.
The e-PB allowed registered voters to exclusively vote online for one out of four potential public works for each of the nine districts of the city.
Based on the research report,According to the administration, the launching of the initiative had three main drivers: i) to modernize its PB through the use of ICTs; ii) to increase citizens’ participation in the PB process and iii) to broaden the scope of public works that are submitted to voting.
The approach seems to have worked. While the traditional PB approach attracted around 1.5 percent of voter participation, the e-PB attracted close to 10%, greatly increasing the direct democratic involvement of citizens with the running of the city. It also allowed the PB process to consider public works of interest to all city citizens, rather than those only of interest to the inhabitants of a specific district.
As part of the e-voting process the city adinistration's website featured a forum where citizens could discuss the potential public works initiatives in a moderated environment.
The voting process took place over 42 days with voters able to vote separately for each district's public works - allowing them to vote up to nine times, once per district.
The security of the vote was managed by using unique voter IDs, termed electoral title numbers, which Brazil issues as part of a compulsory identification document to all voters.
Public voting points were established at 187 points across the city to avoid disenfranchising people without internet access. A mobile internet bus was also used, moving from place to place to between areas with the lowest internet access and those with the highest voter concentration (city centre).
While the IT involved in the initiative was significant, the research paper points out that significant factors in the success of the initiative were the communications campaign and ability for voters to interact online to discuss the public works.
The e-PB attracted 503,266 votes by 172,938 voters, or 9.98% of eligible voters.
While this might seem low by Australia's compulsory voting standards, it was seven times greater than the number of participants in the traditional participatory budgeting process, which only received 1.46% of voter participation in the same year.
Interestingly, the research report found that there was no correlation between socio-economic status and propensity to vote, meaning that the e-PB was not weighted towards more highly educated or richer voters (who are more likely to be internet users).
Also a minimum of 30% of votes were recorded from outside the city's limits. Given that only citizens of the city were eligible to vote, the research report found that the internet approach provided an effective avenue for residents who were not present in the city at the time to vote.
The research report has a lot of additional information on the IT systems and communications approaches used, as well as the use of the online forum.
It is an excellent read for any administration looking at introducing a level of electronic voting, either for offices or for policy or budget measures.
Red tape reduction via smarter online forms |
There's a lot of activity in the online forms space across Australian government at present and it is proving to be an area of real cost savings and environmental benefits for public sector organisations at all levels.
Business.gov.au has supported a centralised whole-of-government approach to business focused forms for several years now and its forms section has grown significantly, particularly in the last twelve months, as agencies have recognised the potential, geared up and invested in the area.
This has been recognised in an Australia article looking at initiatives by councils, Online forms cut council red tape.
The AGOSP (Australian Government Online Services Portal) initiative at AGIMO is also implementing a forms capacity, via business.gov.au, for citizen forms, and this offers significant benefits for any agencies looking to leap into the realm of 'smart forms' - online forms that can be prepopulated or adjust in response to customer answers and then send the data back in a secure format (as email or directly into agency systems).
If you're an Australian public sector organisation at any level who needs to collect data from customers, it's worth checking this out and viewing the presentation given by Anthony Steve of business.gov.au.
Intranet Innovation Award winners for 2008 announced |
The Intranet Innovation Award winners for 2008 have been announced, and their details, together with an executive summary (PDF) containing two case studies of award winners is available at Step Two's website.
The case studies feature an example of collaborative information sharing via a wiki used by staff of one organisation to track competitors and an innovative intranet people finder that improves staff networking and discovery by combining elements of both Twitter and Facebook.
I was inspired by both of the case studies, but a little disappointed to see only one government site mentioned in the awards this year - the Department of Human Services (South Australia) was commended for their CEO blog.
I hope there will be a greater public sector presence next year.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Locating and learning about future public employees using social networks |
I am a reasonably active LinkedIn user (view my profile here).
It's one of my professional networking tools for keeping track of 'people of interest' to me - from business contacts to potential employees and employers.
It, and similar social and professional networks, are also useful recruiting tools for managers and HR professionals seeking to find or screen job applicants.
This isn't news to US HR teams. A recent survey by Careerbuilders.com, as reported in Reuters, found that 22 percent of hiring managers screened applicants via social networks.
From the article, One in five bosses screen applicants' Web lives: poll, of the managers screening applicants, 24 percent found information that solidified their decision to hire, while 34 percent found information that made them drop the candidate from the short list.
I also tend to Google people before making short-listing or hiring decisions (or when hearing about or meeting them professionally). It helps me build context and understanding and it draws on publicly available information (provided by the person in question), so there are no privacy considerations.
In terms of the full hiring process, for HR professionals and managers the online channel doesn't replace resumes, selection criteria and interviews, but it can certainly supplement this process by adding depth.
And for anyone seeking a new job, it is worth reviewing what you've said about yourself online - to ensure that you are representing yourself professionally.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Tapping into the return of the innovative individual |
One of the primary changes resulting from the growth of the internet has been to place professional media tools and distribution capabilities in the hands of individuals.
Any individual with access to a computer and internet connection can create and distribute prose, poetry, commentary, software or services to millions at little cost. Add a microphone and they can conduct talkback or share original music and ass a low-cost digital camera with video capacity and they can also share photos and video.
As detailed in Paul Budde's article, The rebirth of the innovative individual, this is a return to the individual creativity stifled by 'big media' through the 20th century.
The private sector in Australia has already begun effectively tapping into this media change - but how about the public sector?
Car, computer and shampoo companies have supported customer-created television commercials. Prominent political bloggers have been invited to political rallies and 'mummy bloggers' courted by large consumer goods companies. Online musicians have hit the top of the charts and been 'discovered' and online programmers have contributed solutions to major corporate software solutions.
We've even seen other media, newspapers, radio and television channels add the capability for individuals to break stories and provide video and audio coverage used around the world.
On the public front, in other jurisdictions we've seen some government efforts to tap into this space, from the New Zealand police wiki Act (an Act of Parliament written by the public via a wiki) to the UK cash prizes for mashups (where the government is rewarding the best applications built using government information).
In Australia I have not seen any developments on this scale.
Certainly we have a few mechanisms to listen to citizens via different online consultation channels, but listening isn't the same as collaborating.
I am not aware of any major initiatives in Australia where government is saying to the public, We don't know how to achieve the best outcomes in this area, so if anyone has a good idea put it forward and we'll both reward and use the best of them?
This can be challenging step for any organisation used to be the source of answers, rather than the facilitator of solutions.
However, as the private sector is discovering, the new approach delivers excellent outcomes.
I'm hopeful that within a few years we will also see Australian governments using collaborative approaches to write legislation, generate program ideas, produce creative and develop (online) applications and systems.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Can government collaborate in online service development? |
I have participated in the beta testing of software for over 20 years now - it's a great way to get an early look at new developments and to have a level of influence over the development process as a customer (in one case I was even hired as the lead designer on a subsequent product).
Lately I've been participating in a number of private betas for online applications. One of these has just gone into public beta (SlideRocket - an online presentation solution designed to compete with PowerPoint). In this case the developer has made their full issues and fix list available publicly and there is quite an active community helping them improve the application, such as through their User Voice section.
This has made me think about how government develops online services for public use - what prevents us from considering collaborative development in this way?
There are obvious upsides and downsides to a public beta approach for any organisation.
On the minus side, it exposes the service early, meaning that government doesn't have as much time to determine the message for the release and providing detractors with an early opportunity to attack.
It also puts a lower quality solution 'out there', providing opportunities for the public to draw a negative view of the service due to its less than fully developed state. This can make it harder to draw people back when it is more fully developed.
Thirdly, putting a public beta out provides malicious elements more opportunity to find security holes and cause damage.
On the upside, a public beta provides for a much more rigorous level of scrutiny by the public and experts before the service is finally release. This allows issues to be identified and addressed and improves the usability, functionality and stability of the service. It also comes at a lower price tag than running 5,000 focus groups around the country (and internationally).
It also allows several bites at the cherry for government announcements. Firstly comes an announcement on the public beta, positioned as an opportunity for the broader community to test, reflect and comment on the service. Then comes the release announcement, where the government can launch the service - more confident it will hit the mark.
On balance I believe the downsides can be mitigated through careful communications management, whereas the upsides provide enormous efficiency benefits around the consultation area.
It does require a change in project management approach - unforeseen bugs and feature issues will be raised through the public beta process and need to be managed adequately.
I'd also suggest that there would need to be less focus on date/cost and more on adequate service quality to meet customer needs.
I believe this is a broader focus change needed in IT development anyway. I am quite concerned by large projects defined around delivery dates rather than meeting the appropriate level of solution performance for customers.
I wonder which of my upcoming projects is appropriate for consideration in a public beta... I can think of several immediate options.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Gershon recommends procurement integration |
The first public comments from the government on the Gershon Report are beginning to emerge, with The Australian reporting on Thursday, Tanner targets agency wastage in bid to save $1bn.
- allowing public servants to spend more time being customer-focused through spending less time grappling with inconsistent and/or low usability internal systems,
- through reductions in frustration and workplace stress (which impact service quality),
- through easier hiring and transferring of staff who need to adapt to fewer systems in job changes, and
- better information flows within and between agencies to cut delays.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Why you should pay attention to intranet search logs |
My team keeps a close eye on what people search for in our intranet.
It helps us identify patterns in staff behaviour and better support their needs.
In browsing for other online information, I came across a case study from 2006 about a government agency which provides a similar picture of the value of paying attention to intranet search logs.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Improving an intranet staff directory |
My team has been throwing around approaches for improving our internal agency staff directory on the intranet to make it more of a knowledge resource for staff.
As this is the most used tool in our intranet (people need to contact other people), improving the service contributes measurably to our staff's capacity to collaborate and discover the information necessary in their roles.
The more we can streamline people discovery, the more time we can save staff.
Thus far discussions have focused on our own experiences across a number of online staff directories over the years.
For my contribution to the discussion, from my experience over a twenty year span, the first staff directories were based on the paper phone directories used before intranets were common - alphabetical lists of names, titles, teams and phone numbers, divided by region or area.
These lists - and intranet directories - were useful in finding a known person, were you could identify their name and area.
However they had more difficulty in locating unknown people - subject matter experts - as area and team names did not always reflect their activities and without knowing who to contact it was hard to find an appropriate name.
Also traditional staff directories are only name, number and rank - they do not provide details on skills, relationships or communities, which help link people collaborate more effectively.
Therefore I've described three cases I want our future staff directory to cover.
1) Locating details for known people
2) Locating experts
3) Engaging networks of knowledge
As part of these cases, we're considering Facebook and LinkedIn style features, such as,
Involvement in all of these areas would be optional, allowing staff to better self-manage their privacy. However, as in any situation involving information sharing, you get greater value when you share than when you silo knowledge.
Over time this approach lends itself to integration with collaboration tools, forums, wikis, groups and blogs, as well as team-based tools such as group calendars and mailing lists.
We've been looking online for reference material on the topic of staff directories, drawing on the experiences of a number of private sector organisations who have implemented similar types of directories.
A couple of the resources we've found useful include,
I'm very interested in the experiences of other government and private sector organisations in this space - so drop me a comment if you have suggestions to add.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
A glimpse at the future of the semantic web |
Fresh+New, a blog written by Seb Chan from the Powerhouse Museum, has brought to my attention Aza Raskin’s Ubiquity, a very interested look at the possible web of the future, using semantic browsers to provide a more connected experience.
More details are in Seb's post, More powerful browsers - Mozilla Labs Ubiquity, or on Aza's blog.
Below is the video introducing Ubiquity.
Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.
US Air Force planning to create its first virtual air base |
According to the NextGov article Air Force opens bidding for virtual air base, the US Air Force is preparing to launch a virtual air base where airmen will attend courses in a 3D virtual world.
Simulators have long been used in training pilots and astronauts, due to the fatal consequences of mistakes by novices. This air base takes it a step further, with the Air Force looking to support up to 75 simultaneous users in a geospatially accurate real-time training environment.
As described in the NextGov article,The service initially hopes to create two furnished virtual classrooms that can stream audio and video, and to allow users to design their own avatars in uniform with a variety of physical attributes and appropriate rank. The synthetic base also must include buildings, vegetation, signage, roads, security, a flight line with planes and the ability to exchange documents, photographs and video. Once it buys the software and training, the Air Force expects delivery within two weeks.
The system, termed MyBase, is seen as a key component in the Air Force's future training programs. Here's a video from them explaining more...
This type of learning environment is adaptable to many different functions - including virtual seminars and roadshows, collaborative meetings, presentations, media events, group-based activities and real-time or time-delayed course training. Several universities in the US have already made courses available via 3D virtual worlds such as Second Life.
In Australia we've seen some exploration of these technologies by the Victorian state government in its Melbourne Laneways project for public consumption.
My view is that some of the more immediate benefits for the public sector are in internal use of such environments by geographically diverse agencies to create learning and collaborative environments.
In fact the ATO has demonstrated such an environment already in its ATO Showcase as one of the innovations they are exploring for future roll-out.
For public use of these environments today by government the equity issue needs to be well considered.
Personally I've always felt that gradual degradation is an appropriate approach, providing a virtual 3D environment for broadband users, degrading to voice and powerpoint for 'thin' broadband and dial-up users, down to distributed multimedia for computer users without internet connections and to hardcopy or physical meetings for those without computers.
The other consideration is the proportion of the audience falling into each of these groups, and if this has not been established I'd be very cautious about providing more advanced options.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
When too much public information is public |
Related to my previous post, AZcentral reports that, Death notices removed from county Web site.
Privacy concerns and identity-theft fears prompted Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell to halt public viewing of death certificates on the agency's Web site.
"There is so much personal information on them: a mother's maiden name, what they died from," Purcell said, adding that her office has been fielding complaints for years about the office's practice of posting death-certificate images. The office quietly took them down last month.
These are legitimate concerns - there are situations when exposing publicly collected and held information in a more easy to access and harder to control manner is not to the public's benefit.
The question government continues to grapple with is where to draw this line.
How public is public information? |
Over in California a controversy over the level of public access to public information flared up where the The Bee newspaper in Sacremento published a searchable online database of public sector officials and their salaries.
...everything we know about records management is wrong. Sure, that's hyperbole, but Barton [Founder of Glassdoor, now publishing salary information on the web] isn't exaggerating when he claims, "People's appetite for this information ... is effectively infinite." Once again, the Internet will show us what happens when public records are actually public.
Monday, September 15, 2008
The growth of e-health in Australia |
Futuregov has an excellent article, An Australia quest for e-health discussing progress in the Australian e-health scene.
It is good to see that there is a clear understanding of the need for a national approach - tying states into one consistent system, rather than individually building separate systems in each state at additional cost.
In the geospatial area, WA and QLD have launched state-centric systems, with other states considering their own systems. This has taken place while AGIMO plans a national geospatial system within the AGOSP program. They share the same standards, however I'm not clear on whether they have shared technologies and costs.
Tools for user experience design - card sorting |
In the last few years I've witnessed the rise and rise of design and particularly usability/user experience design as a professional area.
In the mid-90s, when I was conducting wireframe-based user testing, observing user behaviour in applications and asking users which functionality was most important to them before building websites, there was low awareness in Australia of the value of usability and correspondingly few people working specifically in the area.
Today, alongside the increase in the number of usability consultants we've seen the arrival of online tools that assist web teams in conducting their own testing.
Card sorting
- The card sorting topic at the Society for Technical Communication's website is one of the best central resources for card sorting information
- Card sorting: a definitive guide is also a fantastic resource from Donna Maurer and Todd Warfel.
- The Eurostar Card sorting Case Study (also by Donna Maurer) is a fantastic example of a card sorting process
- Websort - www.websort.net
- Optimalsort - www.optimalsort.com
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Australian Human Rights Commission prepared to name and shame government publishers failing online accessibility |
On Friday the Disability Discrimination Commissioner, Graeme Innes, at the Australian Human Rights Commission released a media statement, Climate change secretariat excludes people with disabilities, indicating the Commmision was prepared to 'out' government publishers who did not meet Australia's mandatory accessibility requirements for online material.
“I recently said that, if things did not start to improve, the Australian Human Rights Commission would have to start naming government publishers that are not taking the effort to make their documents sufficiently accessible for people with disability,” said Commissioner Innes.
In recent weeks there have been several accessibility-related media stories in Australia which have helped emphasise the importance of accessibility, not simply as a tickbox for web design, but as a baseline requirement for government material - published online or in other forms.
In this particular case the Human Rights Commission was targeting a specific document released originally only in PDF format. All that was being requested was that it be also published in another format as well (such as HTML) to improve accessibility.
"The Garnaut Review Supplementary Draft Report, Targets and trajectories, was released a week ago, but many people with disabilities still can't access it because it is still only available in pdf format", said Commissioner Innes. "These sort of documents should be published in RTF or HTML as well as pdf so that they can be read by all Australians."
For the record, I had a quick look at the Garnet Climate Change Review website and most of their documents are available in HTML as well as PDF.
It is possible to make modern PDF documents accessible, using the accessibility features in Adobe Acrobat Professional 7 or later. This requires an understanding of the tool and some time for larger documents - a straight PDF conversion of such documents from another format (such as Microsoft Word) generally doesn't meet Australia's legislated accessibility requirements.
Why is achieving accessibility so hard?
Given that PDFs can be made accessible, why does accessibility seem so elusive?
In my experience, across both private and public sector, I've found that generally that the webmasters, content publishers, designers and developers have a clear understanding of their obligations under Australia's mandatory accessibility requirements. They also generally understand and have access to the processes required to achieve it - although sometimes funding and timeframes are very tight.
Outside the web area it is often a different story. Generally most people across the rest of the organisation are less aware of the requirements. This can include document authors, communicators and senior executives.
There's no blame attached to this - accessibility isn't a large part of their jobs. These staff rely on the organisation's web specialists and graphic designers to tell them what they must do and assist them in meeting the requirements.
In fact this media release is a good tool to use in this education process.
Friday, September 12, 2008
A compelling reason to ensure government website and intranet information is current |
On Monday this week United Airlines in the US experienced a 75% drop in their share price (from $12.30 to $3.00 per share).
This was due to a 6-year old news story on a newspaper website that was accidentally tagged as current and distributed across the US financial press through Bloomberg's online News Service.
The story has received widespread US coverage, such as this report in Wired, Six-Year-Old News Story Causes United Airlines Stock to Plummet.
An accident some would say - but a very disruptive one. The stock price rebounded when the error was uncovered, but only to $10.19 by the end of Monday. That's a 20% loss in investor money (much more for investors who had sold in a panic) because of old news. The longer term damage will include a loss of reputation and trust in the news provider.
What's the learnings for government - or for any organisation?
One of my takeaways is that it is critical that your website and intranet content remains current. Out-of-date information can lead to financial loss for customers as well as media and political pain for organisations.
It has always disturbed me how poor most organisations are at maintaining current information in their websites.
Senior executives get extremely concerned if staff are providing out-of-date information to telephone or face-to-face customers on a one-to-one basis.
No reputable media team would release material to media outlets that they knew was out-of-date.
Printed publications are regularly assessed to ensure that they provide the right information. If they don't, and the mistake is critical, they are recalled, pulped and replaced quickly - costing tens or hundred of thousands of dollars to do so.
However organisational websites often remain dank swamps of old and inaccurate information.
This is despite their ability to be publicly accessed enmasse and have the information they contain trusted and acted on by any customer, citizen, media representative, community group, corporation, public agency, Minister or Head of State in the world with internet access. That's over 90% of Australians and over 1 billion people who can access your website information at home, office or public location.
Intranets are not much better. Your staff rely on having access to the correct information to make the correct decisions. Mistakes can have serious impacts on peoples' lives, on the organisation's reputation and on peoples' careers.
Organisations place enormous attention on training customer-facing staff - the intranet is a critical tool for the between times, for managing ongoing job training and information dissemination that is difficult and expensive to deliver on a periodical basis.
In the communications stakes an organisation's website and intranet are, in my view, the most important tools for presenting accurate and timely information to outsiders and to insiders.
No organisation can afford to rely on having the media publish releases, or fund a dedicated team of face-to-face communicators in every office to answer staff questions.
We rely on digital tools to communicate outwards (and increasingly to collaborate inwards). So let's use them appropriately, rather than half-ticking boxes and creating a larger and more dangerous mess.
Outsiders and insiders alike rely on an organisation's website and intranet for a clear picture of its activities, intentions and approach. People judge an organisation's commitment to openness and honesty from what they see as well as what they hear.
So if an organisation's website is evasively written, shallow or out-of-date, that's the message customers and media take-away, act on and react to. Silence breeds contempt.
Yes it is hard work to keep organisational websites and intranets up-to-date and it requires significant awareness, engagement, support and appropriate resourcing across an organisation.
Business areas need to be aware of where (and when) their material is available and be held accountable for maintaining it.
Executives must appreciate the importance of communication as a concept and specifically of the online channel as a delivery tool for communications - and collaboration, but that's a different story.
This doesn't require just a change in processes or business rules. It is a cultural shift in mindset - a challenging change for many people and possibly a generational one.
But it's one we must make, and the pain caused by not changing continues to grow with time.
Making e-voting count |
The US has had a number of voting dramas over the last ten years, probably none so well documented as that of the Florida recount in the 2000 Presidential election that saw George Bush Jnr win.
The article, Let's impeach e-voting, considers a recent software patching issue with e-voting machines and how simple it would be for proprietary paperless anonymous voting systems to be deliberately manipulated to provide a result.
This is an election disaster waiting to happen - or perhaps it already has, how could we tell.
I hope that when Australia seriously considers electronic voting we look into systems providing some kind of guarantee that the outcome bears a striking resemblance to the votes of citizens.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
What share of your communications spend is on digital channels? |
MarketingVox has release the article, Marketers' Top 10 Wish List for Agencies of the Future, which reports on a US survey sponsored by Sapient of two hundred CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers).
The report indicates that more than a quarter of marketers said that half to all of their marketing is now done via digital channels. It also reported that nearly 40 percent foresee that in 12 months from half to all their marketing will be done via digital channels.
So what about in Australia?
In Australia we're a few years behind the US (which makes the US a useful predictor of our future).
The 2008 Australian Digital Marketing Trends Survey sponsored by NextDigital, involving 200 communicators across industries (including government) indicated that only around 10 percent of organisations dedicated between 25 and 50 percent of their marketing spend on digital.
However this was projected to grow to 40 percent of organisations within the next five years (by 2013).
It also found that in 2007 only 4 percent of Australian organisations were spending more than 50 percent of their marketing dollars on digital channels, but this was expected to grow to 19 percent in five years.
How is your organisation allocating its communications dollars?
The business case for social media within a government department |
Brought to my attention by the Victorian eGovernment Resource Centre, the below video from Shel Holzman provides an excellent summary of the value of social media as an set of egovernment tools within government intranets.
It addresses common misunderstandings and myths that have limited take-up, case studies of successful social media use and talks through appropriate applications for different tools.
Shel's video should be compulsory viewing for senior public sector executives who have an interest in improving the capture and dissemination of knowledge within their workplace, reduce the knowledge drain as babyboomers exit the workforce or improving their project management capacity and success rate.
This has been postponed until 20 September, in case you want to catch it. The timing is tricky for Australians and New Zealanders, but it will be available on their site after the event.
US public invited to review proposed patents in egovernment Peer-to-Patent initiative |
The US Patent and Trademarks Office (USPTO), is trialing opening the patent examination process to public participation.
This allows members of the public to review pending patent applications and provide input and feedback into the process of assessing patent claims.
In effect, the patent office is acknowledging that the US public has the capacity to improve the US patent process by providing due diligence and scrutiny that the USPTO is unable to provide.
Via the website Peer-to-Patent, members of the public are able to register to review a select set of 400 pending US patents, in an initial pilot program to assess the feasibility of inviting public comments on patent applications.
While I've only just become aware of it, this isn't a new initiative - the pilot has been running for over a year and has generated enormous interest across the patent community.
The Japanese opened their own version of the peer-to-patent site in July 2008, titled Community Patent Review.
This type of project reflects the crowdsourcing potential of the internet, inviting the community to participate, comment on and support (or indicate lack of support) of government-run initiatives, rather than being held at arms length and only consulted according to the government's preferred consultation medium.
Another example I have previously discussed is the New Zealand Wiki Policing Act 2008 which used an online wiki to suggest contents.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
egovernment across South-East Asia - towards seamless integration |
The Economist Intelligence Unit has published a special research report, Towards Seamless Administration (PDF), on the status and challenges of egovernment across South-East Asia, including commments on a number of Australia's nearest neighbours such as New Guinea, East Timor, Singapore and Malaysia.
While Australia and New Zealand are not included in the review, the maturity of egovernment across the region should be a consideration in our planning and thinking.
Just as Australia has provided an example of stable democratic governance and has assisted in the development and security of our neighbours, I believe we have an opportunity and a responsibility to support them in their progress towards more transparent, low-corruption and democratic regimes through the medium of egovernment.
Why Australia should take on a regional egovernment leadership
In my view there are sound economic, social and political reasons for Australia to take on a leadership and supportive role for regional egovernment.
Extending the appeal of fuelwatch - making it 'you'-centrinc |
It's still unclear to me whether a national version of Fuelwatch will be launched due to the political discussions underway (the WA version is at www.fuelwatch.com.au), however a US site named Fuelly has turned the concept on its head to create a useful user-centric site, which would lend itself effectively to extending a Fuelwatch-style approach.
Fuelly, at www.fuelly.com, allows individuals to record their vehicles, fuel use and the prices they paid for fuel to track their car's performance over time.
It is a simple concept which lends itself well to tracking the price of fuel at outlets (just add the service station details and time/date of purchases when people record fuel usage) without the need for expensive monitoring by a central agency or by petrol stations themselves. The site's users will do the work, because they receive a pay-off - precise information on their vehicle's fuel performance over time, which can be compared against the baseline for the vehicle (or compare against aggregate results from others with the same model car).
This type of application works well in the Web 2.0 world. Known as crowdsourcing it involves getting a large number of individuals to each do a small amount of work for an individual payback. As the service grows, so does the payback - encouraging greater participation.
Through having a very large number of participants any inconsistencies get smoothed out - as Wikipedia has demonstrated through its ability to rapidly self-correct when errors arise, (much faster than Encyclopedia Britannica, which has to wait until the next year's edition).
The approach Fuelly takes could easily be extended to include more car-related features - oil changes, services and major overhauls, and could eventually link into insurance programs as a way for individuals to record their car-related activities over time. The concept could continue to expand into other areas of value to people, mash-up with maps (If I drive from Canberra to Sydney, given my car's performance level, how much fuel will I use and what will it cost me), to other types of vehicles and to overall energy use and carbon footprint (just add your electricity, gas and water bill totals). It could then self-fund through advertising and car-related services.
With that type of site you'd add a vast amount of utility to a simple fuelwatch, making it very sticky, useful for people and self-regulating and maintaining.
Of course, being an entrepreneur by background I think towards how to make such a development sufficiently useful to generate a profit.
In the government sector, with the profit motive absent, this might seem all too commercial, though it provides a positive driver to make the service more useful to people, as if it didn't get used, it wouldn't get funded.
Note that this isn't the only crowdsourcing idea that could work in government. Provided that government can identify appropriate opportunities, provide a robust technical framework, fund initial growth and promotion, many concepts would lend themselves to the approach.
After all, the crowdsourcing approach is about putting in place infrastructure usable for the public good, and that's really what governments are about!
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
What's the legal liability in (hyper) linking? |
The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US is investigating the legalities of website linking, putting forward a policy proposal stating that companies should be held liable for linking to other sites containing information related to their share value.
Basically, if a link from a company's website pointed to false or misleading information about the company's prospects, it could be held responsible (under the proposed policy), leading to a fine or more severe action.
Why is this important in Australia?
Because it could be the thin edge of the wedge for linking. If a company cannot link to certain sites for fear of share information related liability (such as a public forum where opinions are aired, or a media publication which accidentally gets a story about the company wrong), it's not too many more steps to a situation where any hyperlinking may contain a legal risk.
If there was a risk for companies, there would also be a risk for government. What if that family-friendly site your agency linked to (even with a warning interstitial) was bought out by an adult products company, who promptly repointed it to one of their adult shops?
Would the agency linking to it become liable for the link? Or would extra legalese be required to discourage anyone going from one site to another, just in case.
This would make one of the fundamental foundations of the internet - linking - a very risky business.
Reported in WebProNews in the article, SEC Looks Into Hyperlink Liability, the SEC's approach does take into account the situation described above - where a clear warning exists, or the intention was not to cause offense or harm, so it's not really the thin edge of that wedge after all.
However I can see greater probity on linking leading to the kind of situation I described above - on the basis that by walling in the garden the customer is protected from 'bad' influences. It was the business model used with considerable success for a number of years by AOL.
Can you see a time coming where linking to other websites (other than trusted .gov.au sites) becomes too risky for your organisation to chance legally?
Is this a real option or should it be considered alongside foil hats?
Safeguarding egovernment networks - what if you had over 1,000 unauthorised web servers connected to your network? |
I'd feel concerned if I was the CIO of a government agency that found it had over 1,000 unauthorised web servers connected to its network.
This is the position the US's Internal Revenue Service is in at the moment, having identified 1,150 unauthorised web servers connected to its network .
As the servers are unauthorised, they are not regularly security patched, making them potential intrusion points for hackers.
As reported in Nextgov, in the article, IRS finds unauthorized Web servers connected to its networks, the IRS is now in the process of creating policies and procedures to prevent the unauthorised servers from accessing IRS data and will be undertaking quarterly reviews to measure compliance with security standards.
Monday, September 08, 2008
Facebook for US intelligence forces launching this month - time to revisit a whole-of-government intranet? |
A-Space, an online collaborative space for US intelligence operatives, is planned for launch this month, giving all 16 US intelligence agencies a streamlined and effective tool for sharing information and collaborating - activities that have been criticised as previously lacking across US intelligence initiatives.
As reported in FCW.com, in the article, A-Space set to launch this month, after logging in,analysts will have access to shared and personal workspaces, wikis, blogs, widgets, RSS feeds and other tools. To log in, analysts will need to prove their identity using public key infrastructure, and their agencies must list them in the governmentwide intelligence analyst directory.
Like many social-networking sites, each analyst will create an online personal profile, and colleagues can see what others are working on and the A-Space workspaces that they are using. In addition, much like Facebook, users can also post notes on one another’s profiles
The A-Space social network will include a search tool and data sets from six agencies at launch, with more to be progressively added.
We've seen several other western jurisdictions introduce cross-agency or whole-of-government intranets (such as Singapore), and there was a commitment made in Australia to establish a whole-of-government intranet by the end of 1998, which never came to fruition.
Perhaps it is time to revisit this.
Getting the basics right - US presidential hopefuls fail website navigation |
Forrester Research has released a report critiquing the navigation of the websites of John McCain and Barack Obama, claiming that both fail basic navigation tests by potential voters.
Nextgov reported in the article, Web sites of both presidential candidates fail to connect with users, that,Forrester used five criteria in its evaluation: clear labels and menus; legible text; easy-to-read format; priority of content on the homepage; and accessible privacy and security policies. McCain's site passed two of those benchmarks: clear and unique category names and legible text. Obama's site succeeded in one area: straightforward layout making it easy to scan content on the homepage.
This came on the back of another report by Catalyst, which tested seven criteria. The Nextgov article quotes that,
Neither site gave priority to the most important information on the homepage, or posted clear privacy and security policies, Forrester concluded.Catalyst asked individuals to perform seven tasks while evaluating each campaign site, including donating money, reading the candidates' biographies and finding their positions on specific policy issues. Obama's site stood out for its design and navigation, but users were confused about certain labels on the homepage, such as "Learn," which contained links to information about the Illinois senator's background and policy positions.
What were the lessons for all government sites?
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Addressing customer service for the email channel |
From my experience in government, both as a customer and as a public servant, I've discovered that when addressing emails from citizens, government agencies often treat email as surface mail rather than as a phone call.
This means that citizens who choose an electronic communications route can often expect response times measured in weeks or months, rather than in minutes or hours.
Personally I find this unacceptable.
In asking why this was the case I have been told that government cannot discriminate based on mode of contact. That we cannot respond faster to customers choosing to use email rather than surface mail - even though a wait of even a few minutes is considered unacceptable for phone calls.
I have also been told by some departments (by phone or via their websites) that they cannot respond by email at all. That to protect my privacy they must send messages via surface mail - that post is more secure, more convenient or more official - even if I am happy to accept the risks and choose to email them.
I saw a similar situation in the private sector five years ago. Companies were unsure whether to treat emails as a postal medium or a a telephonic one.
They did not have a clear understanding of how email worked technically and did not trust its reliability or security (compared to other mediums).
They did not have staff trained or processes in place to handle a high-speed written medium.
Fortunately, at least in the private sector, many organisations are now more mature in their understanding and application of email.
Treat email as a phone call, not as a letter
My solution to ensuring emailing customers get the right level of respect and service in both public and private organisations has remained the same - treat emails as phone calls.
Email is perceived by the community as a nearly instant form of communication, like the telephone or face-to-face.
None of us would let a phone ring for a month before answering it, so why subject customers choosing email to this?
Address security and privacy concerns in a positive manner
Email is often treated with suspicion by organisations, due to perceived security issues in how it is transmitted from place to place and the concern that it is easy to intercept.
However people have adopted email regardless of perceived risks due to its benefits - high speed and low cost with a fast response time. Today, throughout western countries, people send many times more emails, often of a personal nature, than they make phone calls.
Given that government organisations have a greater obligation to protect citizen information than do our customers themselves, how can this be addressed?
I have a three point plan I have successfully used in organisations (including my current agency) to begin to address these concerns.
Three steps to better customer service (by email)
1. Formally assess the risks of email alongside telephony and surface mail
Many organisations have a defacto email security policy, one that has grown from personal opinions, interpretations and often from misunderstandings about the medium rather than through an objective and formal risk assessment process.
This is easy to address - get the legal, technical and customer service people together in a room and assess the risks of each form of customer contact.
It is particularly important to assess relative risk, for example:
- Are the security risks of email greater than for mail, fax, telephony or face-to-face?
- Is postal mail guaranteed to be delivered?
- Is it easier to steal letters from a mailbox than emails from a computer?
- If people choose VOIP telephony, is this treated as email for security purposes?
- Can different levels of privacy be enforced for different mediums/security levels?
Consider different scenarios, for example:
- Are privacy considerations different when the customer initiates (email) communication (with personal information).
- Can customers explicitly provide permission to receive responses (by email) for a set period (even if done by phone or signed fax/letter), accepting responsibility for security?
Consider organisational capability, for example:
- Are staff adequately trained to respond to emails?
Just because people are good on the phone doesn't mean they are good at writing emails! An appropriate etiquette level may have to be taught. - Is the organisation appropriately resourced to address emails in a timely fashion?
International benchmarks indicate that optimally emails should be addressed in less than four hours, with two days the maximum timeframe people are prepared to wait for adequate service. Can your organisation achieve this - and if not, what mitigations does it put in place to communicate this to customers (who will email anyway!)
Assess customer expectations, for example:
- What do customers expect in terms of privacy in email and other mediums?
- Do they expect the same detail level in responses?
- How fast a response do they expect?
- Do they expect organisations to answer as much as they can can and then refer the customer to another channel?
Out of this it becomes possible to correctly understand the medium's characteristics, the real risks, what customers expect and then determine the mitigations which diminish, remove or defer any critical risks.
2. Change internal policies that do not reflect law
Often side-effect from not having conducted a formal risk assessment, internal email policies may not always reflect the current laws of the land (policy is often stricter).
Once a formal risk assessment has been conducted, you should review and rewrite internal policies on customer communications to reflect the risk assessment outcomes.
These policies should include details on when and how a customer can choose to accept the risks and take ownership of the security of the process.
If you find that there are no written policies, write them down and communicate them widely. They should include the background and 'myth-busters' as well as the code of (email) conduct.
3. Review laws to meet community expectations
Sometimes it's the actual laws themselves which are out-of-step with community sentiment and concerns.
Laws are living things, frequently being amended and adjusted to address new situations and changes in social norms.
Privacy and security laws are no different to other laws in this and require regular review to match citizen expectations - there is no 'right' level of privacy, it is dictated by public opinion.
As such, if your customer sentiment reflects a different view and acceptance of (email) security than do Australia's laws, feed this information back into the policy process.
Change is possible, and it will allow your organisation to provide better customer service as a result.
Friday, September 05, 2008
Online is a service option, not just a media channel |
As I mentioned at the end of my earlier post about the Googlisation of the US election, we're now entering a phase in the internet's development where it is shifting from being a media channel towards a service channel.
Many organisations in the private sector have already recognised this and I am seeing the beginnings of this understanding in the public sector as well.
When the internet was first popularised by web browsers it was a technical toy, with the first websites for organisations commonly developed by programmers in technology teams and a few IT-savvy marketers.
Within five years the Marketing and Communications team began to take a leading interest, with a ferocious tussle for control of the platform between technologists and communicators taking place in many organisations. This battle is still going on in many organisations, where IT refuses to let go of certain aspects of web that sit more readily in the communications area, such as
While these battles continue, the internet has moved on, with the introductions of organisations whose sole or major service channel is online, including well known organisations such as eBay, Amazon and Second Life (yes it's a service channel!) and hundreds of thousands of lessor known, but still very successful players.
For these organisations online isn't an adjacent to other channels, it is their primary or sole channel, representing the core of their business.
This has led into Web 2.0, the communal empowerment of the web, which has seen the ease of generating and interacting with content skyrocket, lowering the barriers to creativity and demonstrating comprehensively that people want to participate and if the medium is sufficiently simple they will.
This has led to the current online 'mashup', where across the global internet we can see aspects of all generations of the web, technologists clinging to power, communicators using olde worlde 'shout marketing' techniques, sales organisations pumping products through ever easier purchasing funnels and the growing swell of social networks and people power.
Naturally many organisations are confused and bewildered by the complexity and scope of potential online options, most simply do not understand, with top management mired in views shaped by their experience and education.
The tendency for all of us is to fall back on 'safe' classical models, treating the online medium as a 'technology', a media channel add-on, a basic form-filling medium or a time-waster for habitual networkers.
However as billion dollar companies can be built (or destroyed) and the outcomes of political careers changed through the agency of the internet, it is a far more serious enabler than many organisations have realised.
My view is that it is now time to rethink how our organisations regard the online channel, casting aside preconceptions and experiential models and reflecting on the internet's relationship with us, rather than our relationship with the internet.
From my perspective I view online as an engagement channel - combining service delivery, consultation and communication into a single medium, an enabling driver at the core of how organisations interact with their stakeholders, customers, staff and shareholders.
Where customers do not have internet access the online channel still facilitates and support relationships, enabling improvements in internal information sharing, efficiency and interactions between organisations, thereby improving the experience of engaging via phone or face-to-face channels.
Many organisations are not sufficiently mature to have restructured around the internet as a central enabling driver and I see the online channel commonly 'owned' and 'managed' by Communications, IT or, at the intranet level, in HR.
I believe there is now a strong case in the public sector to begin shifting ownership into the service delivery area, using the internet as both an effective, lower-cost service option and as an enabler under telephony and face-to-face channels.
IT and Communications still remain involved, as their expertise is required to develop and shape the systems and messages delivered, but the bulk of measurable business outcomes are in service delivery areas - including interaction and delivery time metrics, customer satisfaction, service consistency and business efficiency.
At my agency, who I see as one of the leaders in thinking around the online channel, if still managing the technology challenges and building an understanding of how to apply the channel to address business goals, we've just made an internal shift reflecting the online channel being a service option.
We've shifted the management of our online channel such that our Service Delivery area owns the service delivery aspect of our online presence, with the delivery on their goals facilitated by my team in the Communications area and the technology team.
We're also beginning the process of increasing the Service Delivery area's involvement and influence over our intranet, which extends its focus on facilitating customer service provision through supporting front-line staff.
I am very positive about these changes, they are enabling us to make some immediate service quality improvements - some by managing customer expectations, some by changing system behaviours.
Over the next several years I expect to see enormous business value delivered for the government as this model becomes firmly embedded, both for customer engagement to improve our customer approach, as a channel for effective service delivery as well as information provision and by enabling staff to provide ever-improving customer service.
ePetitions proposed for UK parliament |
Last month the UK government endorsed a recommendation to accept ePetitions through the parliamentary website.
As reported in ePractice.eu, this builds on the experience of the 10 Downing Street website, which has accepted ePetitions since November 2006.
Under the recommendation electronic petitions will be hosted on the UK parliament’s website, allowing individuals to add their names and choose to receive updates on a petition's process.
In the past, using paper-based petitions, there has been an average of 100 petitions per year, with the largest receiving 4.5 million signatures.
ePetitions in the UK have already proven to be even more successful. In its first year, the 10 Downing Street site saw more than 29 000 petitions submitted, carrying a total of 5.8 million signatures.
Other nations have also successfully introduced ePetitions, with New Zealand's Wellington city council holding regular ePetitions via the council website.
In Australia Queensland has also held ePetitions via it's Get Involved website. The state has taken the further step of commercialising their ePetitions technology (PDF), turning it into a government revenue stream.
Tasmania has also held ePetitions on a trial basis via the Parliament of Tasmania ePetition site.
Perhaps this reflects another way in which representative democracy can move closer to pure democracy, allowing interested parties to have influential involvement in major legislative change.
A new approach to benchmarking eGovernment in the Web 2.0 era |
The European Journal of ePractice has published an intriguing article by David Osimo exploring a new approach to benchmarking eGovernment provision in the Web 2.0 world.
Moving away from measuring the number or complexity of government services made available online, David proposes that the transparency of public data should be considered as a flagship goal and suggests a simple and cost-effective method for measuring transparency.
It's an interesting read and provides another approach to assessing and comparing egovernment success.
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Case study - helping employees help each other via Intranet social networking |
Prescient Digital Media has published a case study on the adoption and success of Intranet social networking and other Web 2.0 technologies at Sabre, the company that runs most of the world’s airline flight reservation systems.
Sabre custom-built a solution that supports employees in discovering and sharing information between staff, leading to six-figure direct cost savings and improving the information flows throughout the organisation.
In fact the solution was so effective (with over 90% of staff now participating) that Sabre packaged their custom solution and are now selling it to other organisations.
The future of the internet - and how to stop it |
Jonathan Zittrain's new book, The future of the internet - and how to stop it, presents a compelling picture of how the internet has evolved from the 'sterile' and unchangeable computer systems of the 1960s and 70s into a 'generative' environment, enabling individuals around the world to freely develop applications and services and distribute them widely.
The book then looks at what may come next - the impacts of security and privacy holes and the increasing attempts to limit innovation in order to solve these issues.
It provides a compelling view of where we might be headed if we do not take steps at politic and managerial levels to change the direction.
The book is available freely online, notated by readers in an innovative collaborative approach to exploring the written word.
Jonathon has also presented many of the key themes of the book in various lectures, such as the one below.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Review of Google Chrome beta |
I've spent about four hours putting Google Chrome through the wringer and overall are impressed with the browser, despite some rather large functional gaps.
In checking a range of Australian government sites I did not observe any significant usability or display issues - none more than users of Safari (which uses the same renderer, WebKit) already experience.
I did notice a security issues with Medicare Australia's forms, such as the example below. However this crosses into other web browsers as well.
This is a beta - like many of Google's products - and I expect some of these issues to be resolved before they announce the first final release.
However some of the gaps are larger than I would have expected, making me feel that Google rushed out the browser to address the threat Internet Explorer 8 posed.
For instance, java, shockwave and silverlight do not work within the browser as yet, making a number of sites unusable or severely limited (including the Microsoft site).
Also it's not possible to search within text boxes inside web pages - a far more major issue if, for example, you're editing HTML in Blogger (another Google product).
I've not managed to crash the browser as yet and found the way it renders Web applications in standalone windows very effective, particularly when using Gmail, Google Analytics or Last.fm (which isn't Google owned!)
On the plus side, texts have demonstrated that Chrome is significantly faster at running Javascript than other web browsers - making it an effective operating system for the web.
And if you're not convinced that Google is aiming Chrome straight at Microsoft Windows (rather than Internet Explorer), try typing about:Internets into the Chrome Omnibar.
California considering allowing online voter registration |
Online voting has already become reality in some parts of the world, with the Estonian online election heralding the possibility of using the speed of online to expand citizen franchise from electing representatives every three to eight years, to voting on major legislative changes on a far more regular basis.
As reported in a Sign On San Diego article, Calif. may allow online voter registration, California is considering the first step of the shift to online elections, looking into allowing online voter registration, at least for voters who have signatures on file with the Department of Motor Vehicles for driver's licenses or identification cards.
Given the low participation in US elections, California sees this as both a cost-saving and a participation raising activity.
Here in Australia, where compulsory voting has resulted in an complex and increasingly expensive voting framework (which does work very well), we've not yet taken a serious step into online voting - however I expect it will only be a matter of time.
Collaboration doesn't have to equal cost and complexity |
A mistake I've seen many organisations make when considering online staff collaboration systems for staff is trying to achieve perfection at the get go - building systems from scratch or investing in high-cost branded technologies that requires significant time to implement and can be expensive to operate and develop.
More prudent, in my view, is to find a cheap way of satisfying the basic requirements while delivering quickly.
This helps get collaboration (the goal) underway and allows the organisation to progressively develop its understanding of what staff need with a low upfront investment and instant benefits. In other words, a low cost pilot - helpful in the development of detailed business requirements for a future system.
So how can organisations achieve this without expensive servers, months of development and hordes of testers?
In many cases organisations have strict 'environmental' rules - restricting the applications staff can use and websites they can access. These rules are in place partly to protect internal data and partly to protect an organisation from its own staff and their possible activities, introducing malware or other nasties into the organisation.
Using a web environment it is possible for even business users to configure several low cost servers and provide access to tools - within or outside the firewall - while shielding the network from harm.
The tools themselves are low cost or free, drawing from open source communities (tools such as MediaWiki and PhpBB), public online tools (such as Blogger and Ning) and fully featured solutions (such as Wordpress or Confluence - available via Govdex).
So if your organisation needs a quick solution for a blog, wiki or other collaboration tool, consider whether it is possible to run a low cost pilot before investing in a long-term solution
Building online employee communities |
Trevor Cook has posted a great summary of the benefits of online employee communities, as discussed in a presentation by Alexei Fey, Senior Manager eBusiness, Savings & Loans Credit Union at the Enterprise 2.0 for Information Professionals conference in Sydney on 14 August.
Entitled Building online employee communities, the post covers many different ways of engaging online, from a CEO blog to Facebook.
US election goes Google |
Reflecting and building on the approach taken for last year's Australian Federal Election, Google has developed a comprehensive election coverage site for the upcoming Presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain.
Looking at how the site presents public interest information, I cannot help but wonder why this type of material is being provided by commercial entities - who could choose to push an agenda - and is not yet available from a public entity.
As a way to generate voter interest, support participation, provide supporting information and put candidates in front of the people, I hope that we see this approach continue to grow over time.
Given the influence the internet now has, and the impact of effective online use by political candidates, I can see any politicians that choose not to embrace online participation being as a severe disadvantage in future elections.
Turning that question back on public sector organisations - if your department or agency isn't adequately investing in the online channel there is also the risk of becoming increasingly less able to engage, be influenced by and influence your constituents.
My view is that online needs to begin to be treated as more of a customer service channel than as a media channel and be internally planned, managed, supported and funded accordingly.
Google Chrome web browser beta now available for download |
The Google Chrome beta is now available at www.google.com/chrome.
I'm taking a look, and will provide impressions, as I did for Internet Explorer 8, later today.
Other information is available from ZDNet, who liveblogged the Google press conference, and from the Google Chrome media kit, which includes screenshots and videos.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
First pic of Google Chrome |
CNET has published what looks to be the first picture of the Google Chrome browser in an article, Google Chrome update: First screenshot, and live-blog alert.
The release looks to be scheduled for 11am US Pacific time.
Ready for the Google Chrome web browser? |
Google is releasing the beta of its first web browser on Tuesday 2 September - US time, and if the media information Google has released is accurate, the product could reshape the face of web browsing over the next few years.
Google Chrome is the company's first foray into the web browsing market - but represents a step to the left and a jump to the right of previous web browsing technologies.
The fully open source browser implements a range of new features to speed up browsing, reduce the impact of malware and prevent browser crashes - it's more of an operating platform for web applications than a window for viewing web pages.
Google's media release (shaped in the form of a comic) explains the features extremely well for a lay person, and has me quite excited as to the possibilities the browser opens for web developers.
The beta, set to be released on Tuesday - US time - appears to me and to others to be aimed squarely at Microsoft, taking the wind out of their build-up to Internet Explorer 8, which went into public beta last week.
Strategically, in my view, this is a great move for Google.
What does this mean for government web managers
More options requiring support
The first thing it means is that there are likely to be three major browsers to support over the next few years, Internet Explorer (in various versions), Firefox and Google Chrome - with some minor players including Safari and Opera.
Later note: Google Chrome is using the same (open source) rendering engine as Apple's Safari, which should simplify part of the process of supporting the browser.
Need to quickly review and align code to preserve user experience
Given Google's search dominance I expect a fast initial take-up rate, with up to 15 percent of website users trialing the product in the next few months (I'll reflect back on this in two months to see how accurate I was).
This means that website managers need to take a look at the rendering engine used by Google (WebKit) and ensure that their sites are compliant. Otherwise they may see falling traffic or increased help desk calls as users struggle to use forms and other functionality.
More ability to move functionality online
The new browser opens a number of new possibilities for website managers, with multi-threaded javascript allowing more complex and faster web applications. This opens the playing field for better web-based tools, allowing more functionality to move online.
It also, in part, ensures that Google's own stable, including Google Docs, Gmail, Blogger, Youtube and Gears, will run faster and more efficiently (sound familiar? Microsoft has a similar ecosystem with Windows and Microsoft applications).
Survey on Intranet use/adoption of Web 2.0 technologies |
James Robertson of Step Two Designs has posted about a survey being conducted by Prescient Digital Media exploring intranet use and adoption plans for Web 2.0 technologies.
To participate and receive a copy of the aggregate results (plus a chance to win a US$400 prize) complete the short (10 minute) survey.
Government must follow the rules when engaging communities online |
As a law-maker, governments are often more attuned to making the laws and being in the position of controlling and defining the terms of engagement with communities.
Agencies and departments often consult external stakeholders, but on their own terms - choosing the place, the medium and the scope of discussions.
There's good reasons for this, an organism - or organisation - that is in control of its environment feels safer and can manage the depth and cost of engagements.
However, when engaging with existing communities online, government agencies need to be aware that they do not control the ground rules, and must respect and follow the rules of the community to be respected and accepted in return.
This means being able and willing to have authentic conversations, steering clear of defensive behaviour, using clear and simple language, listening actively and not shying away from difficult conversations.
Fortunately there are no shortage of guides for working with communities online as companies often have as much difficulty in engaging as do government agencies.
One such guide was posted recently at the Aussie Bloggers Blog, It's just like a party, providing 13 tips for effective engagement in online forums.
It provides a useful framework for public engagement in the medium.
Monday, September 01, 2008
Online collaboration article from Step Two |
Cairo Walker of Step Two Designs has written an excellent article on collaboration, looking at the use of digital tools and approaches to facilitating adoption within organisations.
Entitled Collaboration: leading by example, the article includes a case study on the World Wildlife Fund detailing how a not-for-profit organisation can productively implement collaboration tools that meet the needs of staff.
How Internet Explorer 8 beta performs - new features to add to toolkit |
I installed the public beta of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 on my personal laptop last week to look at how well my agency's sites were reflected in the browser, and to get more of a feel for the new features it adds to the mix.
I'm pleased to say that just about all the sites I looked at using the browser performed well, with only a few minor issues with form field lengths and div handling.
The browser has certainly played catch-up, taking on all of the great features I am already using in Firefox 3 (such as the smart address bar), making them available to a broader audience who have not tried other browsers before.
A couple of new features may also provide benefits to organisations innovative enough to use them. I'll be feeding some ideas back into my agency to see where we can get to, as below.
Web Slices
This features is a way for websites with frequently updating content to enable users to subscribe to be notified when content changes.
The user benefit is that they do not have to scan through their favourite sites regularly to see whether anything has changed, they can get on with higher priority activities and allow a visible notification in their web browser to let them know when content on a favourite site has been updated.
It works well for news items, stock quotes and other frequently updating content, providing a soft in-browser alternative to RSS feeds (which remain underutilised by the broader online community).
Time will tell how popular this function becomes, but as a way to push market website content, rather than relying on people coming back, it may be beneficial to organisations who have a need to distribute information rather than passively wait and hope their audience returns.
Accelerators
Accelerators are tools to allow users to right click on website content and access specific functionality from third-party online providers. For instance, right-click an address and choose to view it in Google maps, or right-click on text and translate the language using another website.
This adds to current right-click functionality that supports functions from local applications, extending the user's operating system onto the web.
Organisations can add specific functionality, such as legal definitions, purchase information or who to contact for more information.
I would be particularly interested in functionality that can be added on a site-specific basis, such as providing links and definitions from the Child Support Act when on the CSA website, and from Centrelink legislation when on the Centrelink website, however this may not be supported in Internet Explorer 8 - though there might be ways around this.
Use the right online metrics for the job |
One of my mantras in professional life is 'you can't manage what you don't measure'.
Therefore it always worries me when I encounter organisations or individuals with a less than firm grasp on how to measure the success or failure of their online properties.
Depending on the type of web property, different metrics are most important for regular tracking and I believe it's the responsibility of top managers to understand the online metrics they use - just as they need to understand business ratios or balance sheets.
After more than twelve years of trial and error, below are the metrics I most and least prefer to use to track different types of online media.
What are the best metrics to use?
Standard websites
Visits
This tracks the total number of visits by users to a website over a period of time (month, week, day). This can include the same unique visitor returning to the site multiple times - which is the same way calls are commonly tracked for call centres.
Visits gives you an overall view of website traffic and, when divided by Unique visitors, provides a measure of 'stickiness' - how often people return to your site.
Note that for an unauthenticated site, a visitor is essentially an IP address, a computer. As multiple people can use a single PC, or a single person can use multiple PCs and it also may track search spiders and other bots, visits doesn't provide a perfect measure of human traffic but it's sufficiently good for trend analysis over time.
In addition, caching by ISPs or organisations can also influence visits - reports based on AOL from a few years ago indicate that visits reports may under report website traffic by as much as 30 percent due to caching - though this is less important today.
In comparison 'readership' is a much looser metric, but is often held in high regard in the print trade.
Unique visitors
Unique visitors tracks the individual IP addresses used to visit a website and as such provides a rough count of the number of actual users of a site, no matter how many times they visit.
This equates to 'reach' for a site - with growth in unique visitors indicating more people are coming to a website.
This is affected by the same IP versus human issue as visits, however is again still far more accurate than 'readership' figures provided by the press or 'viewer' figures provided by TV and radio - which are based on a sample rather than a population (as unique visitors is).
Pageviews
Pageviews are a more specific measure of the views of specific pages within a website, and is most useful for tactical website tracking, allowing the identification of high and low traffic pages and the impact of different navigational or promotional approaches.
Looking at pageviews also provides a psychological view of your audience's top interests - allowing you to quickly prioritise content to be expanded and which can be downplayed.
Pageviews is becoming less important as technology cocktails such as AJAX are more widely used to load part of a page's content automatically or in response to user actions. In these cases a single pageview may not track what the user views in the page.
Authenticated website (transactional services)
Active users
Active users tracks the actual use by authenticated users (real humans) in a time period.
This is the best measure of an authenticated site's success as it tells you how well you've encouraged ongoing use of a website, rather than simply how good a job you've done at getting people to sign up.
Many authenticated sites prefer to talk about Registered users as this is a much larger number, however if a user has registered but never returns, your organisation gains no value from it.
A low ratio of active users to registered users can indicate site problems, and should prompt website managers to ask the question why don't people come back?
Transaction funnels
Transaction funnels track the completion of transactions step-by-step in a service - and isn't necessarily only for authenticated sites.
This provides a website manager with tactical insights into any issues in a transactional process (or workflow), allowing them to diagnose which steps have the greatest abandonment rate and redevelop the process to improve completion.
Generally improving transaction funnels results in more transactions and more active users, which means greater utilisation of the service.
Multimedia (video/audio/flash)
Views
For any type of rich media, the number of views of the media is critical in determining success. However it has to be weighted against the Duration of views to determine if users spent long enough viewing in order to take away the message, or just viewed the first few seconds.
Duration of views
The duration of media views is a more granular measure of the effectiveness of the presentation - tracking whether the media actually communicated its message to users.
Looking at the average duration viewed, compared to the actual duration of the media (where such exists) provides a very strong effectiveness measure.
Shares
One of the keys with the success of media content is how much it is shared with others online - the word of mouth factor. For media with a 'refer to a friend' tool, tracking the use of this will provide a strong indication of how positively users view the material, and therefore how viral it will become. Media that is rarely shared is probably not getting the message across in a memorable way, whereas highly shared material is correspondingly highly memorable - at least for a short time.
Documents (pdf/rtf/docs)
Views
Often 'downloads' is used to track documents. Personally I prefer views as there are some technical issues with tracking downloads of files such as PDFs. In effect the two measures should be identically, but as PDFs, and sometimes other documents, download by segment, they can significantly overreport downloads (which becomes almost as useless as 'hits'), whereas views is a more accurate measure.
There are ways to fix this within reporting systems - which I've largely done in my Agency's system - however this is not possible in all systems.
Social media
Activity by user
Like authenticated sites, the goal of social media is to encourage participation - whether it be forum posts/replies, wiki edits or social network updates/messages.
Each of these represents activity - which may need to be tweaked by the type of social media.
The more activity by users, the more engaged they are with the site and the greater the prospects of longevity.
Views
The other useful measure is views, measuring the passive involvement of users with a social media site. Not all users will actively post, however if they return regularly to view, they are still engaged to some extent with the site.
Commonly the breakdown between active and passive participants is divided as 1/9/90 (Very active/active sometimes/passive observer), however in practice this varies by medium and community.
While that 90 percent doesn't add to the content of the site, they are vital for the other ten percent to participate.
Search
Top searches
Search is also an important area of sites, with the top searches providing another insight into what people want from your site - or what is not easily findable in other navigation.
Tracking this over time provides another perspective on the psychology of your website users. It helps you understand their terminology for navigational purposes and can help prioritise the content you should modify or add to in the site.
Zero results
Any search terms which result in zero results in your site should be looked into as a high priority.
Generally this reflects areas where your website lacks content or uses the wrong context or different language to the audience.
What are the wrong metrics?
Hits
Probably the least useful metric of all time, Hits is still the best known measurement for websites, despite having no practical business uses.
Hits measures the number of files called from a web server, with each separate file accounting for a single 'hit' (on the server).
On the surface this doesn't sound so bad - however webpages consist of multiple files, with the base page, style sheets, graphics and any database calls or text includes each accounting for a separate hit.
A webpage might consist of a single file, or it might consist of 20 or more - meaning that there is no clear relationships between hits and actual page views or user visits to a website.
To increase the number of hits to a website it simply requires the website owner to place more file calls in the page - potentially calling extremely small (1 pixel square) images, therefore hits can be easily manipulated with no effect on the actual number of website users.
So while hits figures are frequently impressive, even for small websites they can easily reach millions each month, they don't provide any useful business information whatsoever.
