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Bang the Table has released a fantastic little handbook for online community engagement.
Titled 100 Ideas to Help Engage your Community Online the book provides 10 ideas in each of 10 topics.
The book has been released under Creative Commons (BY) - allowing organisations to reuse, share and mash it up for their own needs - provided they attribute the creators.
To help this along, and in recognition that online community engagement is a living topic, I have converted the book into a wiki, allowing anyone to add their own topics and ideas.
I hope this proves useful, and becomes a living resource for online community managers across governments and the private sector.
View the wiki at: http://engageonlineideas.pbworks.com
Or download the original book from: 100 Ideas to Help Engage your Community Online
Thursday, July 08, 2010
100 Ideas to Help Engage your Community Online - the book and the wiki | Tweet |
Friday, June 11, 2010
Reinventing website perfection | Tweet |
Traditionally, in my experience both in the private and public sector, the way to build a 'perfect' website has been considered to be;
invest a large quantity of resources, personnel and time at the start of the development process,
use this investment to build all the functionality that the developers can dream up, write all the content the communicators can think of and test it with audiences,
launch the 'perfect' website and hope it works, and then
replace the website (fixing most of the bits that failed) after 3-5 years by repeating the process again.
Personally I've never liked this approach. It places a lot of reliance on using past knowledge to guess future (organisational and audience) needs, involves investing a lot of resources upfront with limited ability to terminate or redirect projects until after they have failed and it also results in websites that degrade in effectiveness over time which can lead to progressively greater reputation and legal risks.
I'd like to see the process for developing a 'perfect' website reinvented. The new process must involve a low upfront cost, the ability to be flexible and agile to meet changing needs quickly and be capable of making a website more and more effective over time, improving reputation and reducing legal risks.
But how is it possible to achieve all these goals at once?
The answer is actually quite simple and well understood by successful entrepreneurs.
Rather than aiming for a perfect site on release day after an extended development period, the goal is to quickly build and launch a site that meets at least one critical audience need.
Once the site has been launched, ensure there are tools for monitoring how it is used and identifying user needs. Then progressively build extra functionality and write more content, guided primarily by the needs of your audience.
This approach ensures the site has enough value at launch to be successful, albeit in a more limited fashion than a 'kitchen sink' website (with more functionality at launch). It also ensures that the website grows progressively more useful and relevant to the audience you aim to serve.
In this way the site becomes increasingly perfect in a more realistic way - perfect for the audience who use it, rather than 'perfect' for the stakeholders who think they know what different audiences want.
We see this approach taken with all kinds of websites and products - from Apple's iPhones through to online services such as Gmail.
It's time to see more of this approach used with government websites as well.
After all - don't we want to create the 'perfect' website for our audiences' needs?
Thursday, June 03, 2010
The art of leveraging small announcements to drive Government social media engagement | Tweet |
Governments love big announcements. Billions of dollars in spending, bold new projects and initiatives, launches and major events.
These types of announcements are believed to be the best way to cut through the media storm, attract journalist interest and public attention.
These big announcements appear to work well for traditional media channels, that are always chasing the next big story. However the approach does not work as well in social media channels.
The first difference to consider is that when launching a new initiative a government department can reach out to existing traditional media channels with existing audiences. However in many cases a government department may not yet have aggregated their audience online, making it much less effective.
The big launch tweeted to a dozen followers, or posted on a Facebook page that has only been liked by the families and friends of departmental staff, won't create the type of stir intended and may even send an incorrect signal that it isn't worth engaging via social media channels.
Secondly big announcements tend to require much preparation, approval and timing. This makes them annoyingly difficult to release online at precisely the same time as a Minister steps up to a podium to deliver his speech. Even if you release the online announcement at precisely the right moment, it may take minutes, hours or even days (for web domains or searchable information) to become available to the audience.
Thirdly, big announcements are usually rare and there's large gaps between them. While in traditional media the news will be filled up by all kinds of other announcements and events, on a department's social media channels there is no other news to release, leaving them looking sporadic and disinclining audiences to follow them closely.
What I advocate governments departments do is to by all means make the big announcements, particularly via traditional media to create interest and drive people to an online channel, but also use social media channels to make series of regular small announcements through the life of a campaign or program to sustain and grow online interest.
If you're managing an information campaign then you have a range of information available and approved for release. Whether you're releasing videos, publications, factsheets and FAQs or rolling out and completing many small projects within a bigger one, break up your information into 'bite sized' (usually single themed) chunks and distribute them, a few at a time, through your social media channels.
Some people say they have nothing to say, or get concerned that their information may be 'old' because it is already in their website. However it is important to realise that while they might be very familiar with their web content as they visit and think about the website all the time, their audience does not. Every useful, practical, challenging and interesting snippet of information can form the basis for a tweet, a blog post or a Facebook announcement. In some mediums each snippet of information can be published several times through a month - such as on Twitter, where people are not watching your every tweet.
By feeding your social media channel with these small and regular snippets of information (but not too often - no more than a few tweets or one or two posts or Facebook announcements each day) you give your audience a reason to sign-up, to revisit, to share your messages with their friends and to engage with you.
These small announcements can lead into important conversations, giving you even more opportunities to engage in meaningful dialogue and to listen to the views of your audience as they reflect on the information you have provided.
Even more important, when you do have a big announcement, you'll have a pre-prepared, engaged and interested social media audience ready to listen, reflect, share and engage, improving your reach and cut-through and demonstrating how effective social media can be to reach audiences directly without relying on journalists to cover your big announcement.
Monday, April 26, 2010
What would you do if you had unlimited funds to spend on your department's online presence? | Tweet |
Everyone who runs a website dreams of what they would do if they had more funds to spend on improving their online presence.
I've been doing some thinking around this lately as a thought exercise around building priority lists for what needs to be done to strengthen my department's online presence.
I always come back to strengthening base infrastructure first. Ensuring that our own staff have the best tools for their tasks, including high-powered computers, the right software, effective and fully implemented content management and reporting systems, appropriate connections between data and publishing to enable a consistent approach to openness and transparency and, very importantly, that all the staff concerned have the training and support to use all of these systems effectively and to their full potential.
Next for me is strengthening governance and management, doing what is necessary to ensure my department has all of the appropriate governance and standards in place to operate a current, flexible and responsive online presence - including outreach activities to third party websites. blogs, forums and social networks.
Third I look at capability building. Putting in place the systems and functionality that extends the basic infrastructure to allow the department to manage emerging needs.
Interspersed amongst the priorities above are the staffing required to deliver what is needed and redevelopment of websites and tools as required to ensure our online presence meets the needs of our audiences, stakeholders and the government.
Given that funding is not unlimited for most online managers, the next step is to consider what can be done within budget constrains. It's important to also look at which pieces can be funded from other budgets (such as staff training) or whether additional funds can be requested to meet legislative or campaign requirements or as part of modernisation initiatives.
While it's not possible to do everything you want, there is often quite a bit you can actually achieve if you're prepared to spend the time educating decision-makers, liaising with other business areas and building the business cases needed to source funds.
So if you were given a blank cheque, what would you prioritise?
And given that you are unlikely to have one, what will you choose to actually achieve?
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
20 thoughts on government blogging | Tweet |
I was asked today by a representative of another agency for my thoughts, advice and observations on government blogging.
While I don't think I have any particularly unique insights, I realise that people who are new to the medium are at an earlier point on their learning journey. So here's the 20 thoughts I shared (slightly reordered, reworded and extended for flow).
- Post at least weekly to maintain an audience. Less than weekly tends to lose your audience as they don't develop a habit.
- Keep a couple of posts in hand at all times to cover busy periods. Otherwise you can easily miss a few weeks and start losing your audience.
- Where possible keep each post to a single concept or topic. If you have multiple topics, consider breaking them into multiple posts - even parts in a series if appropriate (people will return for Parts 2 and 3 - or seek out Part 1 if they start in the middle).
- Keep posts as succinct as possible. I use 250 words as a rule of thumb for length (though break this for in-depth pieces). Posting very short (50 or less word) items is fine if there is value.
- Create an RSS feed for your blog. This will account for potentially 50% or more of your readership. Consider using Google Feedburner or a similar tracking service to allow you to report on RSS traffic more effectively.
- Cross-promote the blog via your other channels. For example, in Twitter announce your posts with a link; in email announcements include a short summary and your blog and include it in email signatures.
- List your blog in appropriate directories and services such as Technorati. It leads to new traffic.
- Design your blog to look like a blog. Wordpress, Blogger or Typepad blogs are the 'norm' that everyone looks for, just like Google is what people expect in search. A blog that doesn't look like a blog won't be reacted to like a blog.
- First impressions count. Launch your blog with 5-10 posts already live to give people valuable content to start with and to communicate to them the scope you will be covering. This can include older information rewritten for the blog.
- At minimum moderate the first comment made by an individual. This reduces spam significantly. Moderating all comments is OK for risk-adverse agencies, but does stifle discussion - be aware and weigh the risks both ways.
- Make sure the topical scope of your blog and your moderation guidelines are visible and transparent. Review them regularly to ensure that they still cover what you need.
- Give people a reason to engage with you through comments. This can be done by asking questions or posing dilemmas and ideas. Avoid simply posting authoritative statements - save them for media releases.
- Use guest posts to add diversity of views and encourage the audiences of other writers/bloggers to 'try' your blog.
- Release information exclusively/early on your blog where possible. This will encourage people to visit it regularly.
- Keep post approval processes simple and fast. I appreciate this can be a challenge. Keep moderation approvals simpler and faster. Where possible write guidelines on what is acceptable/unacceptable and have it signed off by senior management so that you can manage the blog on a day-to-day basis with a minimum of overhead.
- If you post something incorrect, edit it ethically. If a spelling or grammatical mistake, or a broken link or formatting issue, correct your post. If a factual correction, add it below your post as an edit or as a comment that acknowledges the error. People will respect you for it.
- Blogging is a journey, not a destination. Keep your blog iteratively evolving and live. I 'play' with the design of my blog every month or so - adding new resources, links and features and removing those that didn't work.
- Put a name to your posts - just a first name is fine (if required for privacy). If there are multiple authors, use their different names with their posts. People blog, not organisations (organisations send announcements).
- Keep individual personalities (linked to names) in posts. Nothing rings more false than a sanitised and cleansed neutral tone. People have their own writing styles - used to great effect by newspaper columnists. These styles are what make the columns interesting, and make your blog interesting.
- Give your blog time to find its feet. It can take 6-12 months or more for a blog to find its audience. Few succeed overnight or in a 6 month pilot. However be ready to kill it if it simply doesn't work out. Not all blogs are successful.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Guide to creating your own 'Apps for Democracy' contest | Tweet |
The organisers of the US-based 'Apps for Democracy' competition have released a guide for other governments and organisations on how to run their own similar contests.
The Guide to Creating Your Own Apps for Democracy contains many useful tips based on how to setup a content and what worked and didn't work in the contests run in the United States.
There's also a related presentation available from the link above.
Separately, there's also a document available with a summary of insights from the contest in Washington.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Dealing with video accessibility - automating captions and transcripts | Tweet |
I found out last week that Google had recently integrated YouTube with Google's speech-text technology, allowing videos displayed on YouTube to have their captions and transcripts automatically generated.
In addition, these captions and transcripts can then be translated, via Google's text translation system, and displayed on the video in any supported language.
The transcript can also be downloaded (and corrected if necessary) to be reused in other environments.
Whilst Google admits that neither the speech-to-text autocaptioning or the translation tool are perfect, these are measurable steps forward in using computing power to address accessibility in videos.
It also is a powerful tool for any organisation with video footage - even for internal use. They can simply upload video to YouTube in a private channel, have it auto-transcribed - correct this as required and then translate the material as necessary, then remove the video from YouTube and use the translated material internally.
More information on this tool is available at YouTube's blog in the post, Automatic captions in YouTube and I've embedded their demo video below.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Media after empire - what's next for old media? | Tweet |
Mark Scott, the Managing Director of ABC, has written a very interesting piece in Unleashed about the future of 'old media' empires entitled, Media after Empire.
While it's not specifically about Government, I thought it had some very interesting comments about 'empires' which resonate with some of the challenges that the public sector faces in the digital age.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Crowdsourcing Australian History using Web 2.0 | Tweet |
Nick Gruen over at the Gov 2.0 Taskforce has reminded me of a project I took a look at last year but have never mentioned in this blog.
It's the National Library of Australia's Historic Australian Newspapers archive, which contains digitalised versions of Australian newspapers from between 1803 and 1954 (which are not covered by copyright).
The archive began with the intention of using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to digitalise the newspapers to make them accessible and searchable online - a vital resource for researchers and geneologists.
However the project took this a step further - allowing the public to correct OCR mistakes in text with extremely low barriers to entry.
This led to over 2 millions lines of text being corrected in 100,000 articles in the first six months, with corrections undertaken by 1,300 users from around the world (78% from Australia). In fact there wasn't a single hour in a day when corrections were not taking place - and there were no instances of vandalism.
The IT Project Manager, Rose Holley has written a great report on the project, detailing how the crowdsourcing initiative was suggested, the process they used to understand and manage potential risks, test and establish the system and how successful it has been - including profiles of some of the top participants and what motivates them to contribute.
This report, Many Hands Make Light Work: Public Collaborative OCR Text Correction in Australian Historic Newspapers (PDF), is a must-read for anyone in the Australian public sector considering how they can get the public involved in their online initiative.
The project is ongoing - with more than 2,294 registered users in February this year.
So why not get involved yourself - even just to understand how such a system might work.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Learning to speak and listen to the language of the internet | Tweet |
Speaking with the locals can be one of the most rewarding - and most frustrating - experiences when traveling to foreign-language countries.
If you make an attempt at their language - no matter how feeble - they will generally respect your efforts and go out of their way to be helpful.
However if you simply try to speak with them in your own language or, worst of all, shout at them in your tongue, you may be snubbed or disrespected.
How are these examples relevant to government?
When government departments go online they often continues speaking in their native tongue - using 'govvie speak' - which often uses different words and definitions than everyday speech.
This usually isn't a deliberate attempt to obfuscate. Often departments are trying to communication well, spelling complex meanings out clearly and precisely.
Generally career public servants, public sector lawyers and specialist communicators work hard to find exactly the right words to communicate what their department wishes to say.
So where can this go wrong?
After highly skilled professionals slave over website content, which is then approved by senior public officials, there is often no step to get approval from the highest authority of all.
The 'average' punter - the person reading (and hopefully understanding) the message.
Most communicators understand that if their message isn't coded in a way their audience understands they will be ignored or viewed as less credible.
When delivering fixed length communication pieces, such as advertisements or publications, extensive audience testing is often used to ensure that the message is clear and effective.
To use govvie speak, this testing is a risk mitigation strategy to assert that the contents of a communications piece are widely understood and resonate with the target demographic, thereby achieving an effective policy or program outcome for the government, the department, and for the public purse.
Or, in plain language, testing makes ads work.
How often do we in government test every line of a website's content to make sure it is understandable to its audience in itself and within the context of the entire website?
Even when we do test, how often do we impose layers of approvals after testing?
These can turn a piece of plain language into a swamp containing patches of govvie speak quicksand, which the average punter can easily get swallowed up in.
Of course testing won't take us all the way. Generally there isn't time or resources to test every line of a website in context.
We have to rely on employing professional writers who understand our audience and speak their language. And then we need to trust them and leave their words alone.
As government engages further with the internet, moving from 'look at me' websites to listening and conversing with the public, we need to 'mitigate the risk of audience dislocation, ineffective consultations and ministerial complaints'.
In other words, to make our online discussions work and stop people getting upset when they do not understanding or trust our words it becomes even more vital that our language goes native.
In conclusion, government departments need to blog like the bloggers do and chat like the chatter do. When we listen and communicate respectfully we will earn the respect and credibility of the online world - our citizens.
Monday, August 10, 2009
OpenAustralia barred from republishing QLD's Hansard | Tweet |
It appears that the the Clerk of Queensland’s Parliament has barred OpenAustralia from republishing the state's Hansard on a series of grounds, in a blow to OpenAustralia's goal of making all of Australia's parliamentary Hansard records available online in a searchable format.
OpenAustralia has blogged about the matter, in the post, Queensland bars OpenAustralia from republishing its Hansard, republishing the email from the Clerk of the Parliament in full.
This is a good example of some of the challenges to government transparency and openness. There can be control issues arising from laws and policies which limit government openness which will need to be reconsidered at parliamentary levels.
There can also be education, responsibility, accountability, process and risk considerations around online openness. Who can approve the release of information, what are the foreseeable risks in doing so and how can they be mitigated?
Without a thorough understanding of the online medium, clear responsibilities and effective processes it can be hard in some instances to identify who has the right to approve government information being released.
OpenAustralia is speaking to other state jurisdictions about Hansard records (and has been for a number of months). It will be interesting to see whether the decision taken by the Clerk of the Parliament in QLD will become a precedent or an anomaly.
By the way, this is how Queensland's Hansard website looks.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Free courseware for social media courses - beginning with 'Managing social media PR crisis communications' | Tweet |
Noted Australian social media expert, Laurel Papworth, is releasing a range of courseware to support people running social media courses under a Creative Commons License, allowing reuse for non-commercial or commercial purposes.
Representing a selection of the material Laurel has created over the last five years, this courseware provides individuals and organisations with materials useful in training staff to support social media initiatives.
The first courseware, Social Media PR Crisis Communications is now available for download. Physical colour versions can be published on demand for a small fee via Lulu.
Terms of use and information on further releases is available on Laurel's blog.
Laurel has also launched a Social Media Forum to support conversations around Social Media.
Monday, April 20, 2009
See you at the Managing Your Online Content conference in Sydney this week | Tweet |
I'll be speaking at the Managing Your Online Content conference from Ark group in Sydney this Wednesday on the topic of Aligning your web content strategy with organisational objectives.
I'll be making an effort to log the conference online, either via Twitter (#MYOCG09) or via a liveblog on this blog, if I have access to wi-fi at the venue.
If you're attending, come and say hello to me at some point.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Delivery of a website 'realignment' | Tweet |
Last year I posted about redesigning sites to put customers at the centre of the universe.
At the time we were reviewing my agency's primary site based on usability research and surveys. Through these our customers had indicated that the site was perceived as about us rather than about them (the tools and information they wanted to access quickly).
I'm pleased to say that, after working through a redesign process to align the site more closely with agency goals and styles and some tough decisions on specific content to feature, the new design is now live, largely reflecting the original wireframe concept.
I think we managed to meet the rules I set for my team,
- put customer needs first
- use less words
- minimise disruption
- lift the look
You can view the site at www.csa.gov.au.
Feedback is welcome.
Monday, January 05, 2009
Vic government publishes intranet IA best practice analysis report | Tweet |
The Victorian government has published the Intranet Information Architecture Best Practice Analysis report, conducted by the IA Strategy project team in the Web Domain Group, Department of Human Services (DHS) Victoria.
The analysis is available in summary and in full from the eGovernment Resource centre.
One of the writers of the report, Suze Ingram, has also published comments on her blog as 10 Intranet Best Practice (and more...).
The best practices outlined in the report are supported by evidence statements from various intranet experts to help intranet teams support their case when arguing for improvements.
One of the most interesting sections for me is regarding adequate resourcing of intranets. To quote the report,
It is crucial to the ongoing success of an intranet, that intranet teams are treated and funded at the level of other vital business tools and projects. A successful intranet needs the appropriate staff and resources so they can research, develop and produce.
In his “Managing the Intranet and Teams” report, Jakob Nielsen’s research has calculated that the average size for a core intranet team is five people. As a percentage of an organisation’s total employees, the average proportion of people with responsibilities for the intranet is 0.27% (for an organisation the size of DHS - approximately 12,500 staff - this equates to 33 staff). Some of these team members had other job responsibilities as well; team members often worked only part-time on their intranet. Nielsen asserts that “this is a small number given that intranets are a majority productivity and communication tool for organisations”.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
eGovernment best practice from Utah's CIO | Tweet |
Ari Herzog has begun a series on social media best practice in his blog, AriWriter.
Kicking it off is a fascinating interview with Utah's Chief Information Officer, David Fletcher, providing an insight into how Utah has implemented its online strategy, taking it to win the Best of the Web award for US state governments twice (so far), in 2003 and 2007.
Drawing a few highlights from David's piece...
The state has over 830 services online, was an early adopter of blogging by public servants, services such as Twitter (as covered by USA Today) and online chat (24x7) and the use of video online via Youtube. Do I need to also mention they use wikis?
For many of these initiatives Utah is leveraging free online technologies rather than reinventing the wheel and spending large amounts of public funds. And Utah isn't keeping the performance of Utah.gov a secret - they publish their analytics online.
In August this year the state instituted a 4-day work week for public servants, based on Utah's ability to provide so many services on a 24x7 basis online.
Amazingly, although the state only has 2.6 million residents, the Utah state portal receives over 1.1 million unique visits per month. That's a much higher rate of citizen online participation with government than we see in Australia (for example Australia.gov.au reportedly gets around half this number of visitors (not even unique visitors) for 8x as large a population).
The state has also cut down the time for businesses to register at local, state and federal levels - cutting what could be a several week process down to 30 minutes.
A number of their services have over an 80% adoption rate - which I take to mean that under 20 percent of registrations come via other channels.
And if you want to learn more about the state of Utah's online presence, you can visit David's blog or find him on Twitter at @dfletcher - he's truly walking the talk!
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Cut costs by expanding your intranet | Tweet |
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:
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Open innovation - building engagement between governments, companies and citizens | Tweet |
The McKinsley Quarterly has published a very interesting piece on the future of innovation, The next step in open innovation.
This explores the concept that companies - and government departments - have traditionally been 'closed shops' for innovation. All their innovation has occurred internally with few linkages to the work underway at other organisations.
However this is changing as organisations realise that collaborative innovation, across organisations, reduces waste and stimulates new concepts.
Anyone who has ever sat down and written a report on their own has probably experienced this at a personal level. Bouncing ideas off others triggers new directions and leads to new insights.
With the internet, a global participatory environment, we're beginning to see organisations work more co-operatively with their supply chains, with players in other markets, with the public and even with competitors.
McKinsley gives examples such as:
- LEGO - invited customers to suggest new models interactively and then financially rewarded the people whose ideas proved marketable.
- The shirt retailer Threadless sells merchandise online—and now in a physical store, in Chicago—that is designed interactively with the company’s customer base.
- Open-source platforms developed through distributed cocreation, such as the “LAMP” stack (for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Perl/Python), have become standard components of the IT infrastructure at many corporations.
- Peugeot invited customers to submit car designs and built and exhibited the winning entry at a car show and integrated it into a PC game.
- The Missha cosmetics brand in South Korea has reached 40% market share on the basis of cocreated cosmetics products.
- Wikipedia has grown to over 9.25 million entries (2.44 million in english) in over 250 languages in under ten years (the English wikipedia alone has over 1 billion words - 25x the size of the next largest English encyclopedia).
This isn't purely a private sector development - it is also occurring in the public space. I can think of examples such as New Zealand's collaborative police wiki legislation, or the UK government's mashup competition.
Back to the McKinsley article, one of the points raised is that traditional media and organisational sites are growing in usage at a rate of 20-30% per year.
However sites focused on user-created content are growing at 100%.
The public has demonstrated that it is ready and able to engage organisations in productive discussions - co-developing concepts, products and policy - with suitable incentives.
The article's recommendation is that;
Even the most advanced businesses are just taking the first few steps on a long path toward distributed cocreation. Companies should experiment with this new approach to learn both how to use it successfully and more about its long-term significance. Pioneers may have ideas about opportunities to capture value from distributed cocreation, but fresh ones will appear. To benefit from them, companies should be flexible about all aspects of these experiments.
Where does your department stand?
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Less words, more pictures = better government | Tweet |
One of the biggest issues I've seen in government websites is excessive use of words.
Government agencies often treat each website page as a stand-alone fact sheet. This means they err on the side on completeness, leading to wordiness.
Most of us have seen the research. People don't read wordy, jargon-filled pages - they skim.
People prefer web pages with fewer words, with the option of drilling down to more depth if they need it.
The web is good at this. It's called linking.
All of us have good reasons for our websites being wordy,
- The communications team doesn't understand how to write for the web
- The legal team made us put in those extra (really big) words
- The concept is very complex and people may not understand without details
- My SES made me do it!
It's time to face the music
Why are government websites wordy?
Because website content managers let them become wordy.
As website content managers we are the custodians of what appears on the pages of our websites.
When people want to write long and involved content, it's our responsibility to advise and support them in making the text accessible, readable and effective for the online channel.
We should advise them when other approaches would work better than words - images, animations, audio or video.
They don't need to learn how to write for the web - we do.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Who owns government websites? | Tweet |
I have a very strong view on who owns a government agency's website - it's operated by the agency on behalf of the public.
The teams who look after the code, functionality, design and content are custodians and gatekeepers who ensure that the website;
- works (is online 24/7)
- meets all required standards
- uses appropriate current tools and approaches to maximise its effectiveness
- is attractive and interesting, and, most importantly,
- meets the needs of the agency's audiences
Over the years I've heard many individuals make statements such as (actual quotes);
- Public sector Senior IT manager: It's my code
- Private sector Marketing VP: The website is a communications tool, I own it
Ownership is also important for peoples' careers - often people judge their own success by what they 'own' (or control) professionally - staff, resources and businesses.
Irregardless of which area or executive manages or funds a website, who writes the content or cuts the code, if it doesn't meet the needs of the organisation's customers - does it have any value at all?
As professionals, don't we have an obligation to consider the big picture?
