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President-elect Barack Obama built his campaign on change, and is demonstrating an ongoing commitment to this approach via the site Change.gov.
It's a great living case study on how a government can engage its citizens online in a constructive way.
Showing posts with label rich media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rich media. Show all posts
Friday, November 14, 2008
Governments leading and fostering change | Tweet |
Thursday, November 13, 2008
The rise of the video republic | Tweet |
Paul Johnston, posting at TheConnectedRepublic, has brought to my attention the following video and report on the rise of the video republic.
This looks at how people - particularly young people - are using online video to express their views, share opinions and shape the world views of their generation.
It's a fascinating watch and read and raises the question, how should government be involved in this discussion?
Regardless of what public sector and political leaders decide, this communications channel is growing in strength and will have significant implications on how countries are governed and managed into the future.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Teaching public servants to blog | Tweet |
The British government is funding a campaign, CivicSurf to teach British local politicians how to blog.
It would also be useful to public servants in understanding and communicating the benefits of blogging (as well as how to become bloggers themselves).
Thanks to Stap isi for referring me to the site.
The campaign includes the website, a booklet (PDF) and a video viewable in two parts as below.
Part 1
Part 2
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Which comes first, egovernment Web 2.0 services or government cultural change? | Tweet |
A debate has been going on in Europe recently regarding which comes first - successful Web 2.0 egovernment, or citizen-centric and transparent government.
One argument goes that government must first undergo cultural change in order to deliver effective Web 2.0 services.
The other is that government will undergo cultural change through releasing Web 2.0 services.
I think there's a little truth in both approaches - a government firmly committed to opacity will not be interested in rolling out interactive, citizen-focused services. They are too threatening to the powers that be.
Whereas a government that is already down the road of transparency will be helped along it by hearing, listening to and responding to the wants and needs of its citizens, as delivered online via Web 2.0 services.
Below is a presentation that summed up the area neatly for me.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Building a catalogue of Government 2.0 best practice | Tweet |
A public wiki has been created to capture examples of best practice Government 2.0 initiatives from around the world.
It's just starting out but already has some great examples of how different governments are using tools like blogs, wikis, video and social networks to achieve their objectives and better service customers.
If you have an example to share, or want to learn from the experiences of other egovernment practitioners, visit the site at Government 2.0 - Best Practices
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Why do concerns about Flash persist? | Tweet |
For the last ten years I've been making use of Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) within websites to provide rich content features and applications unattainable with HTML.
Unfortunately I still get asked the same questions about Flash, regarding accessibility, file size and how many users have the technology.
I'd like to put these to bed.
Flash is an accessible format (meets the W3C's requirements in the WCAG), usage is extremely high (over 95%) and file size for downloading is no longer an issue (Flash files are often smaller than equivalents, due to compression and effective streaming).
I've provided more detail in my full post below.
During the late 1990s and early 2000s there were valid concerns over how many people could access Flash files and whether their size would cause issues for dial-up users.
There were also accessibility concerns, which more often reflected the level of production values for Flash in Australia, rather than actual issues with the platform.
I've noticed that there are still many Flash 'doubters' about raising the same concerns as were raised ten years ago.
Fortunately there are some easy ways to put these concerns to rest.
Penetration rate - how many people have Flash?
Adobe representatives I have heard speaking at events regularly state that Flash penetration is greater than 97% in the western world - including countries such as Australia.
Ironically PDF penetration (also an Adobe created format) is slightly lower than this - so on that basis it would be better to provide content in Flash format rather than PDF.
Taking Adobe's self-promotion with a grain of salt, it is easy for organisations to check Flash penetration for their own website audience using their web reporting tools. Where their reporting doesn't provide this statistic, free web reporting tools such as Google Analytics do and can be easily and rapidly added to a site (via a small code block).
For example, for my agency's website, for the last month, Google Analytics tells me that 98.27% of website visitors had Flash installed (and 95% of visitors had Flash 9.0+ or later). This is even higher than that claimed by Adobe, and makes me very comfortable in advocating Flash use within it.
File size versus connection speed
It's also possible via web reporting to track the connection speed of website visitors. This will verify what percentage use broadband versus dial-up, and indicates what percentage are more capable of receiving larger files (250kb+).
This can be useful when validating the use of Flash, which appears to be larger than HTML pages (though often is smaller). However be careful when simply relying on a high broadband penetration rate to validate the use of Flash.
Often Flash is faster than HTML for delivering similar dynamic content. This is because of two reasons,
Due to straming even large Flash files do not take long to start running on the user's system, meaning that the raw file size is less important.
A recent experience we've had in our agency was in considering file sizes for internal elearning modules. In comparing the same module as a Flash file and as a DHTML (Dynamic HTML) file our experience was that the DHTML file was up to 10x as large in size - making Flash a far better option for sites with lower bandwidths.
There are also techniques to reduce the impact on users with slow internet connections, such as detecting the connection speed and running video at lower resolution or asking dial-up users to choose whether they want to wait for a Flash version or see a basic text page.
Flash accessibility
The simple answer for accessibility is that Flash is fully compliant with the W3C and US Government's Section 508 accessibility requirements. The Flash format is accessible.
However when developing in Flash, as when developing in HTML or PDF, the accessibility of the final product depends on the skill and experience of the developers.
Provided that it is clear in the business specification that the product must comply with appropriate accessibility requirements, and that the business can provide necessary alt text, transcripts, metadata, navigation alternatives, subtitles and details for a HTML equivalent - as would be required to make a DVD accessible - the Flash application will meet accessibility standards.
However if the business stakeholders and developers do not quality check the work - whether Flash, HTML, or PDF - it can fail accessibility requirements.
So in short, don't point a finger at Flash technology for accessibility issues, look to the business owner and developers.
In summary
There are still many negative myths around about Adobe's Flash technology - I'm not sure why.
However they are largely mistaken.
Flash is an extremely useful and versatile technology, with extremely high penetration and a very small footprint.
It is also fully accessible - provided your developers know how to use it effectively.
So if your agency is considering developing a multimedia application, a video (for online use) or another interactive tool, Flash is a format you should not discount quickly.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Youtube hosting New Zealand election debate | Tweet |
The New Zealand government has become the latest to use Youtube to support an election debate, with Prime Minister Helen Clark and John Key to face questions posed by New Zealand-based YouTube users during a debate broadcast live on TV ONE on 14 October.
New Zealand YouTube users have been asked to submit video questions up to 30 seconds long, and a number will be selected to feature during the debate.
New Zealand YouTube users have been asked to submit video questions up to 30 seconds long, and a number will be selected to feature during the debate.
I'm still waiting to see YouTube used in a similar way as Howard's weekly radio spot by Ministers to respond to top-of-mind community issues, perhaps as an extension to Community Cabinets to allow a larger number of participants.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
The benefits of staff forums - two way communications with management | Tweet |
A challenge in any organisation is to foster two-way communications.
Many organisations have used suggestion boxes, 'chat with the CEO' email accounts, or other primitive tools to offer pseudo-two way communication, but without the immediacy or ability to readily expose discussions to the broader organisation.
These are often mistrusted by staff as they are essentially black boxes - suggestions go in from individuals and responses may come back, but there is no mechanism for others across the organisation to witness or participate in the conversation.
That's where staff forums can fill a major gap, providing a mechanism for organisations to unblock their communications channels, not only from staff to management, but between staff in different offices.
The following video illustrates how effective an online forum can be for engaging staff and improving customer service outcomes.
It is about British Airways, a 2008 Intranet Innovations Awards gold medal winner, who has engaged its 17,000 cabin crew in discussion around customer service and internal process issues via an online forum.
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Australian history on show - on Flickr | Tweet |
Thank goodness that another Australian institute has taken the step to start placing a pictorial history of Australia up in Flickr.
As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald in the article, Australian history gets Flickr treatment, the State Library of NSW has begun loading its photo collection into the online image library.
It can require a great deal of hard work and organisation to get archives into a viable state to place online (as the Powerhouse museum has already done so well).
The benefit is that a priceless visual history of Australia becomes visible to all Australians, rather than requiring people to travel to the photos to see them (such an antiquated notion!).
Eventually it may be possible to aggregate all the individual collections into a national view of Australia's past in a way never before achievable. Then through user-based tagging, comments and search, different pathways through the images can be used to tell different stories, bringing the past back to live via the people who lived through it.
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Intranets Live online media channel launched | Tweet |
IBF has launched Intranets Live, a monthly 'online media channel' featuring interviews and commentary on intranets and intranet topics from around the world.
While it is useful to access a monthly podcast on what is occurring around the world in the intranet area, the price tag for this option would require careful consideration by intranet managers.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Blog post discussed in podcast report | Tweet |
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 | Tweet |
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.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
What share of your communications spend is on digital channels? | Tweet |
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 | Tweet |
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.
By the way, Shel's regular podcast, The Hobson & Holtz Report, was to have a live phone in on 21 August discussing the topic of my blog post, the relationship between a strong commitment to internal communications and an effective intranet.
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.
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.
Monday, September 01, 2008
Use the right online metrics for the job | Tweet |
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.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
UK government launches online video news channel for public servants | Tweet |
The UK has been operating an online 'television' channel for public servants, LocalGovTV, featuring government initiatives and egovernment examples for some time now.
The service has now launched a regular news channel featuring the latest news on public sector developments within the UK.
While it is necessary to register to view the service, it contains some very interesting insights into what is occurring in public governance in Britain, particularly in the egovernment area (on topics such as Telecare).
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Mapping the social media landscape - a guide for understanding | Tweet |
It can be very daunting for communications professionals to build an understanding of the social media landscape, grasping its scope and diversity and use this knowledge to select the right tools to meet their communications needs.
On occasion I've spoken to other marketers and PR professionals who have said that the sheer diversity and complexity of the social media landscape makes it easier to simply avoid the area, rather than spend the time necessary to make good decisions.
Increasingly organisations will need to take their first steps into this area - social media is in widespread use by internet users and they are talking about you.
The first step to understanding any landscape is to map it - fortunately there have been a few efforts in this regard already.
Possibly the first consolidated attempt was by Robert Scoble, who published the Social Media Starfish last year.
Pictured below, the Starfish provides one way to visualise the different categories of interactions and capabilities of the different social media tools.
A video explanation of the Starfish is also available as below.
A second approach, released more recently, is the Conversation Prism, pictured below.
This was released by Brian Solis, principal of Future Works and author of PR 2.0.
In a report in ZDNet, Brian describes the Conversation Prism as a tool that "helps chart online conversations between the people that populate communities as well as the networks that connect the Social Web." The article, ‘Conversation Prism’ helps corporations visualize social media strategies, provides a good overview of how the tool works.
Of course these maps are only a start. The social media environment is evolving as technology improves and smart people come up with new ways to facilitate human interactions via digital channels.
However now that we do have these maps, we can begin to understand the social media landscape in more detail, and apply the right tools for our communications needs.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Live call-in show discussing the strength of the relationship between internal communications commitment and intranet effectiveness | Tweet |
The online talkback radio program, The Hobson & Holtz Report, will be spending an hour discussing the topic of my blog post on the relationship between a strong commitment to internal communications and an effective intranet.
The program, presented by Shel Holz in California (US) and Neville Hobson in Berkshire (UK), discusses public relations and technology in a twice-weekly podcast.
The live call-in show discussing the topic of my post is set for Saturday, August 23, at 10 am US Pacific, 1 pm US Eastern, or 6 pm in the UK. - which makes it 3am in eastern Australia.
For those who do not want to get up at this time, it will be stored on their website for later listening, and I'll add a link from my blog.
Friday, July 04, 2008
eGov review: Vic Graduated Licensing System | Tweet |
The Victorian government has impressed me for several years for their commitment to the effective use of the online channel in government initiatives.
Their Graduated Licensing System (GLS) for young drivers has been extremely well-supported online, with one of the most creative approaches to the channel I've seen in government.
I don't know the budget for the development, however they have made good use of cheap open-source applications, using the Joomla content management system (one I use personally) for the website and using Youtube for storage and distribution of the campaign video.
The video created for the GLS was the highlight for me - it is quite watchable, full of humour and very unlike a traditional government advertisement. In fact I first discovered this site through people recommending the video on blogs.
The website is well designed to appeal to the main target market - young drivers - using strong imagery and fewer words that your average government website. The navigation is clear and the text effectively customised for the different audiences, but consistently retaining the same voice and with minimal jargon.
The site is designed to function effectively across Firefox and Internet Explorer and has well formed code and metadata, so realistically a few tweaks would make this complete.
Interestingly enough, the site's government branding is placed at the bottom of the page. Given the audience this may help make the site feel more friendly and less formal.
I found many parts of the website a little disappointing. The body text in the site is quite small and there is no control built into the site to allow adjustments to text size. While this is acceptable for the main audience, one of the secondary audiences - the parents of young drivers - could have difficulty reading the small text, particularly as it is white on black.
There is a search function, which is a positive, particularly as there is no site map. However it is unusually placed in the middle-right side of the site, detached from the top menu and most frequent placement for this type of function.
The search results did not appear to be optimised well either. A search on 'GLS', the initials of the system, presented as the top result the new radio campaign. A page actually explaining the GLS did not appear at all in the first (of 5) pages of results.
The FAQ section could also do with some refinement. Firstly it presents results in question then answer format, but without a list of questions at the top. This means that someone seeking an answer has to read down the page in the hoping of finding it. This is made even harder as the questions are in gray text, on the site's black background, making them easy to miss as they are less visible than the rest of the text.
So in conclusion, it's a good campaign, with an excellent video for the medium and backed by a decent website.
With some refinements to the text sizing (such as a control to change name), search placement and results weighting and to the presentation of the FAQs, it could be a great site.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Follow-up on real-time government - video stream available online | Tweet |
A quick addition to my post on real-time government, here's more background on how online technologies are being used to enable real-time government.
Watch Congressman's Culberson video stream for an explanation of an approach he's using to reach his constituents as a 'real-time representative'.
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